Prometheus
Prometheus: A Prometheus-native metrics platform with PromQL, alerting, retention, and federation. Ranked #5 of 36 in Time-Series Databases by our editors (8.8/10); pricing: Free plan; best for prometheus-native monitoring metrics.
At a glance
- Editor score8.8 / 10
- PricingFree plan
- Best forPrometheus-native monitoring metrics
- Free planYes
- Paid fromFree
- DeploymentSelf_hosted
- Founded2012
- Facts checked22 Sep 2026
Where it wins
- PromQL supports selecting and aggregating labeled time-series data.
- HTTP scraping, service discovery, and exporters support metric collection.
- Recording rules, Alertmanager, federation, and remote storage extend monitoring.
Where it doesn't
- No SQL support for querying time-series data.
- Local storage is single-node rather than horizontally scaled.
- Broader architectures require federation or remote-storage integrations.
Our verdict on Prometheus
Prometheus is an open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit for infrastructure, applications, and services, particularly in dynamic and microservice-oriented environments. It collects numeric metrics through HTTP-based scraping and stores timestamped time-series data with metric names and labels. The standalone server runs on Linux, Windows, and macOS, with PromQL for querying and aggregating metrics. Its open-source model suits teams that want control over deployment and an established Prometheus-native monitoring workflow.
The core feature set centers on metric collection and operational rules. Static and service-discovery-based target configuration support changing environments, while the local on-disk time-series database uses write-ahead logging. Configurable time- and size-based retention manages local data, and recording rules can precompute queries for reuse. Alerting rules send notifications through Alertmanager. Prometheus also supports Pushgateway, exporters, OpenTelemetry, remote read and remote write, and integrations with Grafana and remote storage systems, giving it a broad ecosystem around its PromQL-based model.
Prometheus is strongest when monitoring metrics are the primary requirement and a team is comfortable with PromQL rather than SQL. Federation between Prometheus servers and remote-storage integrations can support larger distributed monitoring architectures, but the local storage model remains single-node and horizontal scaling is not provided as a native category capability. Teams seeking SQL support or built-in horizontal scaling should choose an alternative. Teams adopting Prometheus should pick it for labeled metrics, HTTP scraping, alerting rules, and a flexible open-source monitoring architecture.
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Prometheus pricing
Prometheus fact sheet
| Free plan | Yes |
|---|---|
| Paid from | Free |
| Deployment | Self_hosted |
| SQL support | No |
| Retention policies | Yes |
| Horizontal scaling | No |
| Query languages | PromQL |
| Ingestion methods | HTTP pull scraping; Pushgateway; Remote Write; OpenMetrics backfilling |
| Deployment | Self-hosted |
| Platforms | Web, Windows, macOS, Linux |
| Support | Community, Docs |
| Built for | Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise (editorial estimate) |
| Integrations | 8 integrations: Kubernetes, Grafana, AWS Timestream, Azure Data Explorer, Cortex, Grafana Mimir … See all → |
| Pricing | Free plan |
| Website | prometheus.io |
| Facts checked | 22 Sep 2026 |
Prometheus integrations
Prometheus lists 8 integrations on its own site.
- Kubernetes
- Grafana
- AWS Timestream
- Azure Data Explorer
- Cortex
- Grafana Mimir
- Thanos
- VictoriaMetrics
See all Prometheus integrations →
Alternatives to Prometheus
- Apache IoTDBA focused open-source choice for high-volume IoT ingestion, SQL, retention, and scaling.9.3
- Amazon TimestreamA managed AWS option with flexible ingestion, retention, SQL, and InfluxDB support.9.1
- LindormTSDBA broad compatibility layer for teams managing scalable telemetry and metrics workloads.9.0
See all Prometheus alternatives →
Prometheus vs the competition
- Prometheus vs Apache IoTDB
- Prometheus vs Amazon Timestream
- Prometheus vs LindormTSDB
- Prometheus vs kdb+
- Prometheus vs Grafana Mimir
- Prometheus vs InfluxDB
Compare Prometheus with any tool side by side →
Also Ranked In
Prometheus is ranked in 11 of our directories; the 6 strongest besides Time-Series Databases.
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Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
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