Google Cloud Monitoring vs Prometheus

Google Cloud Monitoring8.8Visit Prometheus8.7Visit

Higher score Google Cloud Monitoring #6 in Cloud Monitoring 8.8/10 Free plan Free plan✓ 0 of 3 features Visit Google Cloud

vs

Prometheus #7 in Cloud Monitoring 8.7/10 Free plan Free plan✓ 0 of 3 features Visit Prometheus

• Google Cloud Monitoring fits best

  Google Cloud environments

• Prometheus fits best

  Teams building open-source metric monitoring

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Side by side

Feature	Google Cloud Monitoring 8.8/10 Visit ↗	Prometheus 8.7/10 Visit ↗
At a glance
Editor score	8.8	8.7
Ranking	#6 in Cloud Monitoring	#7 in Cloud Monitoring
Best for	Google Cloud environments	Teams building open-source metric monitoring
Pricing model	Free plan + paid	Free
Starting price	Free plan	Free plan
Free plan	✓	✓
Free trial	—	—
Deployment	Cloud	Self-hosted
Platforms	Web	Web, Windows, macOS, Linux
Support	Community	Community, Docs
Built for	Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise	Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise
Features Google Cloud Monitoring 0/3 · Prometheus 0/3
Kubernetes monitoring	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Serverless monitoring	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Synthetic monitoring	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Specs
Cloud providers	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Metrics retention	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Log retention	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Our review
Pros	Dashboards, metrics exploration, alerting, uptime, and synthetic monitoring Supports VM metrics, Prometheus, custom metrics, and SLO monitoring Connects with Google Cloud, AWS EC2, Kubernetes, and logging services	PromQL supports selecting and aggregating labeled time-series data HTTP scraping supports static and service-discovery-based targets Alerting, federation, and remote read/write support broader architectures
Cons	Uses usage-based pricing rather than fixed plans No free plan Retention periods vary by metric type	Local storage is single-node No SQL query support Horizontal scaling is not verified
Our verdict	Google Cloud Monitoring is a managed observability service for monitoring application and infrastructure performance, availability, and health. It is designed for teams operating Google Cloud environments, with support for hybrid and… Read the review →	Prometheus is an open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit for collecting numeric metrics and storing them as timestamped time-series data with labels. It suits teams monitoring infrastructure, applications, and services, particularly in… Read the review →

Strengths and trade-offs

• Google Cloud Monitoring — where it wins

  • Dashboards, metrics exploration, alerting, uptime, and synthetic monitoring
  • Supports VM metrics, Prometheus, custom metrics, and SLO monitoring
  • Connects with Google Cloud, AWS EC2, Kubernetes, and logging services

  Where it doesn't

  • Uses usage-based pricing rather than fixed plans
  • No free plan
  • Retention periods vary by metric type

• Prometheus — where it wins

  • PromQL supports selecting and aggregating labeled time-series data
  • HTTP scraping supports static and service-discovery-based targets
  • Alerting, federation, and remote read/write support broader architectures

  Where it doesn't

  • Local storage is single-node
  • No SQL query support
  • Horizontal scaling is not verified

• Google Cloud Monitoring8.8/10 · Free plan

  A broad managed monitoring service for teams running Google Cloud environments.

  Visit Google CloudFull verdict →
• Prometheus8.7/10 · Free plan

  A strong Prometheus and PromQL foundation for open-source metric monitoring.

  Visit PrometheusFull verdict →