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Cortex vs Thanos: catalog facts
Cortex	Thanos
Free Free and open source. Hosting, hardware and any external services are separate.	Free Free and open source. Hosting, hardware and any external services are separate.
Self-hosted	Self-hosted
Supports distributed metric ingestion and querying Keeps metrics beyond individual server lifetimes	Combines data from multiple Prometheus instances Supports durable object-storage retention
Requires managing several infrastructure components in larger deployments.	Requires an existing metrics collection setup and supporting storage.
Self-hosted	Self-hosted
Open source	Open source
License: Apache-2.0	License: Apache-2.0
Not stated if an account is needed	Not stated if an account is needed
Not stated if it works offline	Not stated if it works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 22, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 22, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.