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Prometheus vs RRDtool: catalog facts
Prometheus	RRDtool
Free The open-source software is available without a license fee. Hosting, hardware and…	Free Free and open source under GPL-2.0-or-later with the RRDtool FLOSS exception.
Windows, macOS, Linux, Self-hosted	Windows, Linux, Command line
Label-based data model and PromQL make ad-hoc questions easy to answer Pull model needs no agent configuration beyond exposing a metrics endpoint	Stores time-series data in a fixed-size database Generates graphs from collected metrics
Local storage is not clustered; long retention needs Thanos, Mimir or similar Pull model does not suit short-lived jobs without a push gateway	Designed for time-series logging and graphing rather than general-purpose monitoring
Self-hosted	Downloadable app
Open source	Open source
License: Apache-2.0	License: GPL-2.0-or-later WITH RRDtool-FLOSS-exception-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 October 8, 2026

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