Chaos Monkey
Chaos Monkey: A focused, self-hosted option for controlled VM and container termination. Ranked #25 of 25 in Chaos Engineering Platforms by our editors (6.7/10); pricing: Open source; best for simple scheduled instance termination testing.
At a glance
- Editor score6.7 / 10
- PricingOpen source
- Best forSimple scheduled instance termination testing
- Paid fromFree
- Kubernetes supportYes
- Facts checked20 Sep 2026
Where it wins
- Free and open-source with self-hosted deployment
- Supports VM and container termination across several backends
- Grouping, exclusions, leashed mode, and timing controls limit blast radius
Where it doesn't
- Requires manual building and self-managed deployment
- Depends on Spinnaker, MySQL, Go, and cron
- Focuses on termination rather than network failure injection
Our verdict on Chaos Monkey
Chaos Monkey is an open-source resiliency tool from Netflix for teams that want scheduled, controlled termination of virtual machine instances and containers. It runs on Linux and can operate across backends supported by Spinnaker, including AWS, Google Compute Engine, Azure, Kubernetes, and Cloud Foundry. Its intended audience is engineering teams comfortable managing an internal tool and deliberately testing whether production workloads tolerate instance loss.
The published design centers on scheduled weekday termination jobs generated with cron. Teams can configure termination frequency and the minimum time between terminations, group instances by application, stack, or cluster, and apply region independence controls. Account, region, stack, and detail-level opt-outs provide additional boundaries, while leashed mode supports simulated terminations before destructive actions. A MySQL-backed schedule stores termination data, and Spinnaker integration handles application configuration. These controls make the product a practical fit for a defined termination workflow rather than a general-purpose experiment platform.
Deployment is self-hosted and manually built rather than delivered as a hosted service. The documented setup requires Spinnaker, MySQL, Go, and cron, so operational ownership sits with the adopting team. Chaos Monkey also connects with etcd and Consul, but its verified scope remains narrow: Kubernetes support, cloud failure injection, experiment scheduling, and blast-radius controls are present, while network failure injection is not. Choose it when scheduled VM or container termination is the specific resilience question. Teams seeking broader failure types or a managed onboarding path should consider a platform with wider experiment coverage and less infrastructure to maintain.
Questions about Chaos Monkey
What does Chaos Monkey run on? Linux. It runs self-hosted.
What does Chaos Monkey integrate with? 4 integrations: Spinnaker, MySQL, etcd and Consul.
Who is Chaos Monkey built for? Mid-market companies and enterprises (our editorial estimate).
Your product? Our editors can test Chaos Monkey in depth and publish a review, labelled as paid · from $149/mo →
Chaos Monkey pricing
Chaos Monkey fact sheet
| Free plan | Not verified |
|---|---|
| Paid from | Free |
| Kubernetes support | Yes |
| Cloud fault injection | Yes |
| Network fault injection | No |
| Experiment scheduling | Yes |
| Deployment model | Self_hosted |
| Blast-radius controls | Yes |
| Deployment | Self-hosted |
| Platforms | Linux |
| Support | Community, Docs |
| Built for | Mid-market, Enterprise (editorial estimate) |
| Integrations | 4 integrations: Spinnaker, MySQL, etcd, Consul |
| Pricing | Open source |
| Website | github.com |
| Facts checked | 20 Sep 2026 |
Chaos Monkey integrations
Chaos Monkey lists 4 integrations on its own site.
- Spinnaker
- MySQL
- etcd
- Consul
Alternatives to Chaos Monkey
- Chaos ToolkitBroad, low-cost multi-cloud chaos testing with declarative experiments and safeguards.9.3
- Chaos MeshA broad, self-hosted toolkit for controlled Kubernetes fault injection.9.1
- Harness Chaos EngineeringA free hybrid-cloud option with strong experiment controls and broad infrastructure coverage.9.0
See all Chaos Monkey alternatives →
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Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Nov 2026
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