Telegraf review
A flexible, metrics-focused agent with extensive plugins and self-managed deployment.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Sep 2026
Telegraf is an open-source, plugin-driven agent for collecting, processing, aggregating, and writing metrics and events. It is suited to teams collecting infrastructure, application, cloud-service, container, IoT, and hardware-sensor data across Linux, macOS, Windows, and self-hosted environments. The agent runs as a single binary and uses TOML configuration for input, processor, aggregator, and output plugins, making it a fit for metrics-centric telemetry pipelines.
Telegraf OSS is free and includes 400+ input and output plugins with self-managed deployment. Its collection and delivery options cover operating systems, services, databases, IoT sensors, and hardware. Metrics can be filtered and processed, aggregated over configurable periods, buffered in memory or on disk, and written to destinations including InfluxDB, files, message queues, Prometheus, Datadog, and Elasticsearch. Custom collection is supported through exec, execd, file, HTTP, and external plugins.
The Enterprise plan starts at $18,000 per year and adds centralized configuration management, real-time agent health monitoring, a visual configuration builder, RBAC and API tokens, and enterprise support. Telegraf also has focused sensor coverage through lm-sensors, storage-device S.M.A.R.T. information, IPMI, and other hardware-related sources. It is a strong choice for teams that want configurable metric collection and control over deployment. Teams seeking a primarily logs-and-traces pipeline, or a managed deployment model in the OSS edition, should consider alternatives.
Telegraf pros and cons
- Where it wins
- 400+ input and output plugins
- Buffers metrics in memory or on disk and retries failed writes
- Supports hardware, IoT, database, service, and operating-system metrics
- Where it doesn't
- The OSS edition requires self-managed deployment
- Its documented scope centers primarily on metrics
- Enterprise pricing starts at $18,000 per year
Telegraf fact sheet, pricing and score →
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