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Prometheus vs Cortex: catalog facts
Prometheus	Cortex
Free The open-source software is available without a license fee. Hosting, hardware and…	Free Free and open source. Hosting, hardware and any external services are separate.
Windows, macOS, Linux, Self-hosted	Self-hosted
Label-based data model and PromQL make ad-hoc questions easy to answer Pull model needs no agent configuration beyond exposing a metrics endpoint	Supports distributed metric ingestion and querying Keeps metrics beyond individual server lifetimes
Local storage is not clustered; long retention needs Thanos, Mimir or similar Pull model does not suit short-lived jobs without a push gateway	Requires managing several infrastructure components in larger deployments.
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.