Prometheus vs Zabbix

by Gralio Feb 27, 2025

Prometheus and Zabbix offer robust monitoring solutions, each catering to different needs. Prometheus shines in cloud-native environments and real-time monitoring, while Zabbix provides wider infrastructure coverage and more out-of-the-box integrations. Choosing the right tool depends on the complexity of your IT infrastructure and your team's expertise.

At Gralio.ai we help to simplify your decision-making process by offering detailed, side-by-side software comparisons like this one, to help you confidently choose the tool that aligns with your business goals.

This comparison was created by analysing 326 reviews and 60 websites, saving 2 hours, 18 minutes of reading.

Prometheus

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Zabbix

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About

Prometheus provides a suite of tools to manage assets like equipment and infrastructure. Its focus is on large, asset-heavy industries. The platform aims to improve efficiency and safety in areas like maintenance, compliance, and operations. Prometheus integrates with existing enterprise software for a unified approach.

Zabbix is a software tool that helps you keep an eye on your company's computers, servers, and other IT equipment. It's like a central dashboard showing you if everything is working correctly. Zabbix can alert you if something goes wrong or if performance drops, helping prevent problems and downtime. It's used by companies of all sizes and is known for being scalable, meaning it can grow with your business. Zabbix offers both cloud-based and on-premise solutions, giving you flexibility in how you manage your IT infrastructure monitoring.

Summary

Main difference

Prometheus excels in real-time monitoring and Kubernetes integration, ideal for cloud-native applications and containerized environments. Zabbix offers broader monitoring capabilities across various IT domains, including networks and hardware, making it suitable for diverse infrastructure monitoring.

Relative strengths of Prometheus (compared to Zabbix)

Strong Kubernetes integration: Prometheus is purpose-built for monitoring Kubernetes, simplifying containerized application monitoring.
Real-time monitoring: Prometheus provides excellent real-time insights into application and server performance.
Flexible and customizable: Prometheus allows users to define custom metrics and alerts tailored to their specific needs.

Relative weaknesses of Prometheus (compared to Zabbix)

Steeper learning curve: Prometheus's query language (PromQL) can be challenging for beginners.
Limited out-of-the-box integrations: While customizable, Prometheus requires more manual configuration for integrations compared to Zabbix.
Complexity in scaling: Managing a large Prometheus deployment can become complex, especially for high-volume data.

What companies are using Prometheus and Zabbix?

No data

Dell

Nexon

European Space Agency - ESA

ICANN

SEAT

Orange

Who should use Prometheus VS. Zabbix

Prometheus is a monitoring and alerting toolkit ideal for large enterprises with complex IT infrastructures. Users praise its comprehensive metrics collection and alerting capabilities, especially for Kubernetes. However, some find its query language complex and memory usage challenging. It's a powerful tool for organizations needing real-time insights into their systems.

Zabbix is an open-source monitoring tool ideal for businesses of all sizes, particularly in IT and Telecommunications. Users appreciate its comprehensive monitoring capabilities and ability to track diverse metrics, from server resources to certificate expirations. However, some find the initial setup complex and the documentation lacking. Zabbix offers flexible deployment options, including cloud-based and on-premise solutions.

Best for medium to large businesses (101+ employees), especially large enterprises.
Ideal for asset-heavy industries needing robust monitoring, like energy or manufacturing.

Ideal for small to large businesses.
Best fit for IT and Telecommunications.

Prometheus and Zabbix features

Supported

Partially supported

Not supported

Type in the name of the feature or in your own words tell us what you need

Comprehensive Monitoring

Partially supported

Prometheus primarily monitors services and applications, often requiring integrations for comprehensive infrastructure coverage.

Supported

Zabbix monitors networks, cloud, websites, servers and offers a single pane of glass view. IoT support might require custom configurations.
Real-time monitoring

Supported

Prometheus excels at real-time application and server monitoring.

Supported

Zabbix supports real-time monitoring of servers and applications.
Performance monitoring

Partially supported

Prometheus likely supports network performance monitoring via exporters.

Partially supported

Zabbix monitors packet loss and other metrics, but support for latency and jitter is unclear.
Reporting

Not supported

Prometheus Group does not directly support network performance reports.

Supported

Zabbix can generate scheduled PDF reports on network performance.
Cloud environment support

Supported

Prometheus supports monitoring cloud environments, especially Kubernetes.

Supported

Zabbix supports monitoring applications in AWS, Azure, and GCP.
Bandwidth monitoring

Supported

Prometheus can monitor bandwidth usage with appropriate configuration.

Supported

Zabbix supports bandwidth monitoring and provides tools to analyze and visualize this data.

Qualities

Value and Pricing Transparency

No data

No data
Customer Service

No data

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Ease of Use

No data

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Reliability and Performance

No data

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Ease of Implementation

No data

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Scalability

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Prometheus and Zabbix Pricing

No data

See full Pricing page

No data

We couldn't find a pricing page for Zabbix.

Prometheus and Zabbix review insights

Users love

Wide range of charts and visualization tools.
Easy to expose metrics on any web app.
Supports webhooks and third-party software.
Easy to implement, especially for Kubernetes.
Helpful for collecting metrics and creating alerts.

Zabbix is an open-source advanced monitoring and alerting solution.
It produces meaningful graphs and has triggers for each alert.
It can monitor almost anything - from server resource consumption to web server certificate expiration date or database table data.
Easy to install and use.
Its capacity to monitor anything from servers and network devices to cloud services means that no component of our ecosystem is left uncontrolled.

Users dislike

High memory consumption can be difficult to debug.
Sharded architecture is not true sharding.
UI could be improved with features like Grafana.
PromQL queries can be complex and hard to learn.
Alert management and integration with different channels can be challenging.

Zabbix agents does not work in all applications like network Nas and conflict with other agents for backup solutions.
The initial setup can be quite complex and may require a steep learning curve for new users.
Some of the errors are non-descriptive.
It would be nice if it were agentless...
The documentation offered by Zabbix is not much; it is not complete and it is messy between versions

Prometheus and Zabbix Ratings

Glassdoor

2.9/5

(424)

Glassdoor

4.0/5

(6)

Company health

Employee growth

6% increase in the last year

17% increase in the last year

Web traffic

36% decrease in the last quarter

No change in the last quarter

Financing

No data

How do Prometheus's asset-heavy features compare to Zabbix's IT infrastructure focus?

Prometheus is geared towards asset-heavy industries, providing tools to manage physical equipment and infrastructure, aiming to improve efficiency and safety in areas like maintenance and operations. Zabbix, while capable of monitoring a broad range of IT components including networks, cloud, websites, and servers, focuses primarily on IT infrastructure monitoring, alerting users to performance issues and potential downtime. Therefore, Prometheus has a broader asset management scope, while Zabbix maintains a more focused approach on IT infrastructure health and performance.

Which product, Zabbix or Prometheus, offers easier integration with existing systems?

Zabbix offers broader integration capabilities compared to Prometheus. While Prometheus excels at Kubernetes integration and metrics collection through exporters, Zabbix supports a wider range of integrations with various IT infrastructure components, including networks, servers, and applications, through its agent-based and agentless monitoring approaches. This makes Zabbix more adaptable to diverse existing system environments.

What are the advantages of Prometheus?

Prometheus offers strong real-time monitoring capabilities, especially for cloud environments and Kubernetes, along with robust database performance monitoring. It's praised for its wide range of visualization tools and ease of metric exposure for web applications. Its focus on asset-heavy industries makes it particularly suitable for organizations needing to improve efficiency and safety in maintenance, compliance, and operations.

What are the disadvantages of Prometheus?

Prometheus' disadvantages include high memory consumption that can be difficult to debug, a sharded architecture that isn't true sharding, a UI that could be improved, complex and difficult PromQL queries, and challenging alert management and integration with different channels.

Alternatives to Prometheus and Zabbix

Datadog

Datadog is a cloud-based software platform that gives you a complete view of your company's technology systems, from websites and apps to servers and databases. It helps you monitor performance, analyze data, and improve security, all in one place. Datadog is designed for companies of all sizes and is used by various teams, including IT, development, and security. It helps businesses ensure their technology runs smoothly, efficiently, and securely.

Nagios XI

Nagios XI helps you keep an eye on your company's computers, network, and software to make sure everything is running smoothly. It alerts you to problems before they impact your business and helps IT teams resolve them quickly. This reduces downtime and prevents work interruptions. Nagios XI is highly customizable, making it suitable for various IT environments. It offers different pricing options based on the size of your infrastructure.

Splunk Platform

Splunk Platform helps you investigate and understand what's happening across your IT systems. It collects and analyzes data from various sources, giving you insights into performance, security threats, and user behavior. This allows you to quickly identify and address problems, improve efficiency, and make better business decisions. Splunk is particularly helpful for managing complex IT environments and is used by companies of all sizes.

SAP EAM

SAP EAM is a software designed to help you manage all your assets, from factories to equipment. It provides real-time insights into how your assets are performing and helps you make better decisions about their usage and maintenance. With SAP EAM, you can reduce costs, optimize asset lifespan, and improve your return on investment. It's a comprehensive solution for businesses that rely heavily on physical assets.

Elastic Stack

Elastic Stack is a data analysis platform that helps you understand your data better. It lets you explore relationships within your data, like finding connections between customers, products, or events. Imagine visually mapping out your data to uncover hidden patterns. You can easily search, visualize, and understand complex relationships in real-time, using dashboards and intuitive tools. Elastic Stack is useful for various tasks like fraud detection, making recommendations, and improving security.

Dynatrace

Dynatrace helps you understand how your software is running, like a health tracker for your apps and systems. It monitors everything - websites, networks, user experience - to pinpoint problems before they impact your business. With AI-powered analysis, Dynatrace simplifies complex data, giving you clear answers and helping you automate IT tasks.

Page co-authored by

Michal Kaczor

CEO at Gralio

Michal has worked at startups for many years and writes about topics relating to software selection and IT management. As a former consultant for Bain, a business advisory company, he also knows how to understand needs of any business and find solutions to its problems.

Tymon Terlikiewicz

CTO at Gralio

Tymon is a seasoned CTO who loves finding the perfect tools for any task. He recently headed up the tech department at Batmaid, a well-known Swiss company, where he managed about 60 software purchases, including CX, HR, Payroll, Marketing automation and various developer tools.

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