Looking for a Prometheus Alternative?

Prometheus is the gold standard for time-series monitoring. But running Prometheus + Grafana + Alertmanager + exporters is a full-time job. FiveNines gives you the monitoring without the ops burden.

Start Free - 5 Monitors

No credit card required · 2-minute setup

FiveNines server monitoring dashboard

Quick Comparison

Feature Prometheus FiveNines
Infrastructure Self-hosted (Prometheus + Grafana + Alertmanager) Fully managed
Setup Configure exporters, scrape targets, alert rules One agent, 2-minute install
Server metrics
Docker monitoring cAdvisor required
Built-in dashboards Needs Grafana Included
Public status pages
Incident management
Vulnerability scanning
Starting price Free (self-hosted + Grafana) Free / €9/mo

Zero ops burden

Prometheus needs a server, Grafana needs a server, Alertmanager needs a server, and each exporter needs configuration. FiveNines is one agent install.

Dashboards included

Prometheus has no built-in visualization. You need Grafana (another server, another config). FiveNines includes dashboards that work out of the box.

Alerting without YAML

Prometheus alerting rules are YAML files processed by Alertmanager. FiveNines has a visual workflow builder with drag-and-drop alert configuration.

When Prometheus might be a better fit

If you need PromQL's power, custom exporters for niche services, or long-term metric storage with Thanos/Cortex, Prometheus gives you more flexibility. It's the right choice for teams with dedicated SRE capacity. FiveNines is the better choice when you want monitoring results without maintaining monitoring infrastructure.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does FiveNines compare to Prometheus?
Prometheus is a powerful open-source monitoring toolkit that requires self-hosting and significant configuration (exporters, scrape configs, alert rules, Grafana for dashboards, Alertmanager for notifications). FiveNines is a managed platform where one agent install gives you metrics, dashboards, alerting, and status pages.
Is Prometheus more flexible than FiveNines?
Yes. Prometheus with PromQL gives you far more query flexibility, and the exporter ecosystem covers virtually any metric source. FiveNines trades that flexibility for simplicity. If you need custom PromQL queries or exotic exporters, Prometheus is more capable.
Can I migrate from Prometheus to FiveNines?
Install the FiveNines agent on your servers. It collects the same core infrastructure metrics (CPU, memory, disk, network, Docker) that node_exporter and cAdvisor provide. You can run both during migration and compare data before switching.

Related Features

Custom Dashboards

Build monitoring dashboards with drag-and-drop simplicity. Shareable public links included.

Server Alerts

Multi-channel alerting via Email, Slack, Discord, Telegram, Pushover, and webhooks.

Docker Monitoring

Per-container CPU, memory, network & disk stats without Prometheus or cAdvisor.

See how FiveNines compares: vs Grafana Cloud · vs Zabbix

Read our guide to the best infrastructure monitoring tools in 2026.

Ready for monitoring without the ops burden?

Start Free - 5 Monitors

Free tier includes 5 monitors - no credit card required