Side by side
Sematext Monitoring vs Thanos
Both stand on kubernetes monitoring. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.
Free plan LinuxWebWindows
Choose Sematext Monitoring if you need broad infrastructure coverage, service integrations, and alerting across Linux, Windows, and cloud environments. Look elsewhere if agentless monitoring is a requirement; also check that the Basic plan’s one-day retention meets your needs.
Visit Sematext Monitoring Free plan APILinuxSelf-hosted
Thanos provides cross-cluster querying and long-term storage for Prometheus environments. Its security limitations around local metrics and HTTP APIs should be weighed when planning a deployment.
Visit ThanosThe facts
| Sematext Monitoring | Thanos | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Not published | Not published |
| Runs on | Linux, Web, Windows | API, Linux, Self-hosted |
| Lowest paid plan | See the plans | Free or on request |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Maker | Not published | Not published |
| Website | sematext.com | thanos.io |
| On kubernetes monitoring | #24 of 54 | #28 of 54 |
Sematext Monitoring: what it does well
- Monitors infrastructure across Linux, Windows, Kubernetes, and containers.
- Tracks CPU, memory, disk, I/O, network, and load metrics.
- Lists more than 100 out-of-the-box integrations.
- Alerts can reach email, Slack, PagerDuty, or webhooks.
- Paid plans list unlimited sources and users.
What to know first
- Monitoring is agent-based; agentless monitoring is not supported.
- The Basic plan has one-day data retention.
- The starting price depends on hosts, containers, plan, and retention.
Thanos: what it does well
- Queries metrics across Prometheus servers and clusters.
- Supports unlimited retention using object storage.
- Downsamples historical data for large-range queries.
- Works with Grafana via the Prometheus Query API.
What to know first
- Requires Prometheus v2.2.1+ with persistent disk.
- Local metrics are not encrypted by Thanos.
- HTTP APIs lack authorization and TLS support.
- Single-node production use is not recommended.
Alternatives to Sematext Monitoring Alternatives to Thanos The whole list