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Grafana Mimir vs Prometheus

Grafana Mimir: Grafana Labs' horizontally scalable, multi-tenant long-term store for Prometheus and OTLP metrics. Prometheus: CNCF-graduated pull-based monitoring system with a local TSDB, PromQL and alerting rules.

key differences

  • Licensing: Grafana Mimir is open source (copyleft) (GNU AGPL v3.0); Prometheus is open source (permissive) (Apache License 2.0).
  • Grafana Mimir is built for larger datasets (Multi-PB) than Prometheus (≤ 100 GB).
  • Horizontal scaling is native in Grafana Mimir and manual in Prometheus.

choose grafana-mimir for

  • +Centralised multi-tenant metrics for many clusters
  • +Long-term Prometheus storage on object storage
  • +Platform teams offering metrics-as-a-service internally

best at · Observability, Time-series

choose prometheus for

  • +Kubernetes and microservice monitoring
  • +SLO and symptom-based alerting
  • +Host and infrastructure metrics via exporters
  • +Short-term metrics store feeding a long-term backend via remote write

best at · Observability, Time-series

Grafana MimirGrafana Labs' horizontally scalable, multi-tenant long-term store for Prometheus and OTLP metrics.
PrometheusCNCF-graduated pull-based monitoring system with a local TSDB, PromQL and alerting rules.
overview
Primary model
Time-Series
Time-Series
Also supports
–
–
Type
Database engine
Database engine
Status
Active
Active
Developer
Grafana Labs
Prometheus Authors (CNCF)
First release
2022
2012
Latest version
3.2.3 (Oct 22, 2026)
3.15.1 (Oct 21, 2026)
License
Open source (copyleft)GNU AGPL v3.0
Open source (permissive)Apache License 2.0
Free tier
✓
✓
popularity
WhichDB Score
15.8
70.8
Rank
#203
#9
GitHub stars
5.3K
66.8K
Stack Overflow questions
10
7K
scale & guarantees
Comfortable data size
Massive (Multi-PB)
Small (≤ 100 GB)
Horizontal scaling
Native
Manual
Multi-region
None
None
ACID
None
None
Consistency
Eventual
Eventual
Schema
Schemaless
Schemaless
Architecture
Distributed, Shared storage
Single node
deployment
Self-hosted
✓
✓
Vendor-managed cloud
✓
—
Serverless
—
—
Embedded
—
—
Edge
—
—
Clouds
AWS, Google Cloud, Azure
AWS, Google Cloud, Azure
capabilities
Transactions
—
—
Joins
—
—
Secondary indexes
—
—
Full-text search
—
—
Vector search
—
—
Geospatial
—
—
JSON
—
—
Change data capture
—
—
Triggers
—
—
Stored procedures
—
—
Materialized views
—
—
TTL / expiry
✓
✓
Pub/Sub
—
—
Columnar storage
—
—
In-memory
—
—
Durable persistence
✓
✓
Compression
✓
✓
Encryption at rest
—
—
Role-based access
—
—
Time travel
—
—
Branching
—
—
Online schema changes
—
—
Streaming ingest
✓
✓
Offline sync
—
—
Runs in WebAssembly
—
—
interfaces
Query languages
PromQL
PromQL
Client languages
–
Go, Java, Python, Ruby, Rust
Best for
Observability, Time-series
Observability, Time-series
Add more to this comparisonNot sure either fits? Try smart match

Grafana Mimir vs Prometheus: FAQ

What is the difference between Grafana Mimir and Prometheus?

Grafana Mimir: Grafana Labs' horizontally scalable, multi-tenant long-term store for Prometheus and OTLP metrics. Prometheus: CNCF-graduated pull-based monitoring system with a local TSDB, PromQL and alerting rules. Licensing: Grafana Mimir is open source (copyleft) (GNU AGPL v3.0); Prometheus is open source (permissive) (Apache License 2.0). Grafana Mimir is built for larger datasets (Multi-PB) than Prometheus (≤ 100 GB). Horizontal scaling is native in Grafana Mimir and manual in Prometheus.

When should I choose Grafana Mimir over Prometheus?

Choose Grafana Mimir for centralised multi-tenant metrics for many clusters, long-term Prometheus storage on object storage and platform teams offering metrics-as-a-service internally. Choose Prometheus for kubernetes and microservice monitoring; SLO and symptom-based alerting; and host and infrastructure metrics via exporters.

Is Grafana Mimir or Prometheus more popular?

Prometheus ranks #9 on the WhichDB Score (70.8/100) and Grafana Mimir ranks #203 (15.8/100). Popularity is not fit: check the requirements that matter for your project.

Are Grafana Mimir and Prometheus open source?

Yes. Grafana Mimir is open source. License: GNU AGPL v3.0. Yes. Prometheus is open source. License: Apache License 2.0.