head to head · open source
Uptime Kuma vs thanos
Uptime Kuma has 93,190 GitHub stars, 8,655 forks, 805 open issues and last shipped yesterday. thanos has 14,266 stars, 2,404 forks, 908 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Uptime Kuma leads on adoption by 553% (93,190 vs 14,266 stars). Uptime Kuma is written in JavaScript under MIT; thanos is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Uptime Kuma has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, thanos 17%. Uptime Kuma was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (monitoring), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Uptime Kuma | thanos | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 93K | ★ 14K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.7K | ⑂ 2.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Uptime Kuma if
- You weight community size — 93K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick thanos if
- You want the thanos feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and thanos fits your workflow better
About Uptime Kuma
Uptime Kuma Uptime Kuma is an easy to use self hosted monitoring tool. 🥔 Live Demo Try it! Demo Server (Location: Frankfurt Germany): It is a temporary live demo, all data will be deleted after 10 minutes. Sponsored by Uptime Kuma Sponsors. ⭐ Features Monitoring uptime for HTTP(s) / TCP / HTTP(s) Keyword / HTTP(s) Json Query / Websocket / Ping / DNS Record / Push / Steam Game Server / Docker Containers Fancy, Reactive, Fast UI/UX Notifications via Telegram, Discord, Gotify, Slack, Pushover, Email (SMTP), and 90+ notification services, click here for the full list 20 second intervals Multi Languages Multiple…
read the full Uptime Kuma overview →
About thanos
📢 ThanosCon happened on 19th March 2024 as a co located half day on KubeCon EU in Paris. Overview Thanos is a set of components that can be composed into a highly available metric system with unlimited storage capacity, which can be added seamlessly on top of existing Prometheus deployments. Thanos is a CNCF Incubating project. Thanos leverages the Prometheus 2.0 storage format to cost efficiently store historical metric data in any object storage while retaining fast query latencies. Additionally, it provides a global query view across all Prometheus installations and can merge data from Prometheus HA pairs on…
read the full thanos overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Uptime Kuma or thanos more popular?
Uptime Kuma has 93,190 GitHub stars and thanos has 14,266. Uptime Kuma has the larger community by that measure.
Are Uptime Kuma and thanos free?
Both are open source. Uptime Kuma is licensed under MIT and thanos under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Uptime Kuma and thanos?
Uptime Kuma is written in JavaScript and thanos in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Uptime Kuma or thanos?
Choose Uptime Kuma if you want the larger community (93,190 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose thanos if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.