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Metrics and time-series tools with a free plan in 2026

Collect, store and query numeric time series, and evaluate alert rules against them. This list has 10 metrics and time-series tools. Of these, 9 are open source, 10 have a free plan and 9 can be self-hosted. Checked by hand on 30 September 2026.

  1. 1

    Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus

    Serverless, Prometheus-compatible metrics store on AWS: remote-write metrics from EKS or other clusters and query them with PromQL.

    Free plan Free: 40M samples ingested, 10 GB stored (AWS Free Tier) CloudMetricsKubernetes
  2. 2

    Cortex

    Horizontally scalable, multi-tenant long-term storage for Prometheus metrics; a CNCF project.

    Free Open source (Apache-2.0) Self-hosted Metrics
  3. 3

    Grafana Mimir

    Horizontally scalable, multi-tenant long-term storage for Prometheus metrics from Grafana Labs, backed by object storage.

    Free plan Open source (AGPL-3.0) Self-hosted Metrics
  4. 4

    Graphite

    Time-series metrics storage and graphing: Carbon receives metrics, Whisper stores them, and Graphite-web renders graphs and serves a query API.

    Free Open source (Apache-2.0) Self-hosted MetricsDashboards
  5. 5

    InfluxDB

    Time-series database for metrics and events; InfluxDB 3 Core is open source, with Enterprise and managed cloud editions.

    Free plan Open source (MIT OR Apache-2.0) Self-hosted Metrics
  6. 6

    Nightingale

    Open source alerting and dashboard platform that sits on Prometheus, VictoriaMetrics, Elasticsearch and other sources, with alert rules and notification routing.

    Free plan Open source (Apache-2.0) Self-hosted MetricsDashboardsAlert routing
  7. 7

    Prometheus

    CNCF metrics system that scrapes time series from exporters and apps, stores them locally, and evaluates PromQL alert rules that it sends to Alertmanager.

    Free Open source (Apache-2.0) Self-hosted MetricsKubernetes
  8. 8

    Telegraf

    InfluxData's plugin-based agent that collects metrics and events from systems, services and APIs and writes them to InfluxDB, Prometheus and many other outputs.

    Free Open source (MIT) Self-hosted MetricsInfrastructure
  9. 9

    Thanos

    Adds a global query view, high availability and long-term object-storage retention to existing Prometheus servers; a CNCF project.

    Free Open source (Apache-2.0) Self-hosted Metrics
  10. 10

    VictoriaMetrics

    Prometheus-compatible time-series database and monitoring stack in single-node and cluster versions, with enterprise and managed cloud editions.

    Free plan Open source (Apache-2.0) Self-hosted Metrics

Side by side

Tool Pricing Free plan Open source Self-hosted PromQL or compatible queriesPrometheus remote writeOTLP metrics ingestLong-term storageClustering or high availabilityDownsamplingAlert rule evaluationMulti-tenancyBuilt-in query UIManaged hosted service
Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus Free plan 40M samples ingested, 10 GB stored (AWS Free Tier) No No YesYes-YesYes-YesYes-Yes
Cortex Free Yes Yes Yes YesYesYesYesYes-YesYesNoNo
Grafana Mimir Free plan Yes Yes Yes YesYesYesYesYes-YesYesNoYes
Graphite Free Yes Yes Yes No--Yes-YesNo-YesNo
InfluxDB Free plan Yes Yes Yes NoYes-YesYesYesYesYesYesYes
Nightingale Free plan Yes Yes Yes YesYes----Yes-Yes-
Prometheus Free Yes Yes Yes YesYesYesNoNoNoYesNoYesNo
Telegraf Free Yes Yes Yes NoYesYesNo-NoNoNoNoNo
Thanos Free Yes Yes Yes YesYesYesYesYesYesYesYesYesNo
VictoriaMetrics Free plan Yes Yes Yes YesYesYesYesYesYesYesYesYesYes

Yes: confirmed in the tool's documentation. No: documented as not offered. -: not confirmed. Plans and prices change; check each tool's own site before you decide.

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