Grafana Mimir vs Thanos
Grafana Mimir: Grafana Labs' horizontally scalable, multi-tenant long-term store for Prometheus and OTLP metrics. Thanos: Sidecar-plus-object-storage layer giving Prometheus global queries, HA dedup and long retention.
key differences
- Licensing: Grafana Mimir is open source (copyleft) (GNU AGPL v3.0); Thanos is open source (permissive) (Apache License 2.0).
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 thanos for
- +Long-term storage for multi-cluster Prometheus
- +Global dashboards across regions
- +Cost-efficient metrics retention on S3/GCS
best at · Observability, Time-series
Grafana Mimir vs Thanos: FAQ
What is the difference between Grafana Mimir and Thanos?
Grafana Mimir: Grafana Labs' horizontally scalable, multi-tenant long-term store for Prometheus and OTLP metrics. Thanos: Sidecar-plus-object-storage layer giving Prometheus global queries, HA dedup and long retention. Licensing: Grafana Mimir is open source (copyleft) (GNU AGPL v3.0); Thanos is open source (permissive) (Apache License 2.0).
When should I choose Grafana Mimir over Thanos?
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 Thanos for long-term storage for multi-cluster Prometheus, global dashboards across regions and cost-efficient metrics retention on S3/GCS.
Is Grafana Mimir or Thanos more popular?
Grafana Mimir ranks #203 on the WhichDB Score (15.8/100) and Thanos ranks #257 (13.1/100). Popularity is not fit: check the requirements that matter for your project.
Are Grafana Mimir and Thanos open source?
Yes. Grafana Mimir is open source. License: GNU AGPL v3.0. Yes. Thanos is open source. License: Apache License 2.0.