Comparison

Prometheus vs TimescaleDB

On the evidence we track, Prometheus leads this comparison with a composite score of 69/100. Scores are only directly comparable because these tools share a category; the full breakdown and every source is below.

Machine formatsJSONMarkdownGraphQLor send Accept: application/json
Prometheus69
TimescaleDB55
Score
Vioscale score
Prometheus69 / 100medium · 58%updating
TimescaleDB55 / 100medium · 51%updating
Pricing
Free tier
Prometheus
TimescaleDB
Model
Prometheusopen_source
TimescaleDBcommercial
Price level
Prometheusfree
TimescaleDBlow
Transparent
Prometheus
TimescaleDB
Integrations
Count
Prometheus18
TimescaleDB7
Reliability
Status page
Prometheus
TimescaleDB
Adoption
Dependent repos
Prometheus5,467
TimescaleDB0
Github stars
Prometheus65,837
TimescaleDB23,420
Package downloads weekly
Prometheus9,036,061
TimescaleDB
Activity
Commits last 30d
Prometheus100
TimescaleDB100
Release
Cadence days
Prometheus6
TimescaleDB13
History
Prometheus20 items
TimescaleDB20 items
License
Spdx
PrometheusApache-2.0
TimescaleDB
Language
Primary
PrometheusGo
TimescaleDBC
Market

Capabilities

Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for time-series databases. “-” means undocumented, not absent.

Query
Query language (SQL / PromQL / InfluxQL-Flux / Graphite)
PrometheusPromQL
TimescaleDBSQL
SQL compatibility
PrometheusNon-SQL
TimescaleDBFull SQL
Ingest
Ingest model
PrometheusBoth
TimescaleDBBoth
Model
Data model
PrometheusMetrics (labels/tags)
TimescaleDBMetrics (labels/tags)
Lifecycle
Downsampling / rollups
Prometheus-
TimescaleDB-
Retention / TTL
Prometheus-
TimescaleDB-
Storage
Compression (columnar / delta / Gorilla)
Prometheus-
TimescaleDB-
Performance
High-cardinality handling
PrometheusStrong
TimescaleDB-
Scale
Clustering / horizontal scale
PrometheusDistributed / sharded
TimescaleDBDistributed / sharded
Replication / HA
Prometheus
TimescaleDB-
Deployment
Deployment
PrometheusSelf-hosted
TimescaleDBEmbedded
Interop
Prometheus remote-write compatible
Prometheus
TimescaleDB-
Licensing
Licence class
PrometheusPermissive OSS
TimescaleDBPermissive OSS

What each one is

The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.

Prometheus

Leader

A systems monitoring platform that collects metrics from configured targets at regular intervals, evaluates alert rules using PromQL, and triggers notifications. It uses a dimensional data model with key-value labels for flexible metric analysis and dashboarding.

Independently observed

TimescaleDB

TimescaleDB is a PostgreSQL extension designed to handle machine data and time-series workloads at scale, enabling operational databases for IoT platforms and physical-world monitoring.

Independently observed

Pricing

List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.

Prometheus

Leader
Open sourceFree tier
as of verify ↗

TimescaleDB

HybridFree tier

Open source core; Cloud managed and Enterprise self-hosted options available; contact sales for pricing details

  • Cloud Basic SupportFree
    • Email support
    • General questions
    • Best practices guidance
  • Cloud Production SupportContact sales
    • 24x7 support for Severity 1-2
    • 1h response for critical issues
    • Support portal access
    • On-call assistance
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.

Platforms
Web
Prometheus
TimescaleDB
macOS
Prometheus
TimescaleDB
Windows
Prometheus
TimescaleDB
Linux
Prometheus
TimescaleDB
CLI
Prometheus
TimescaleDB
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
Prometheus
TimescaleDB
Self-hosted
Prometheus
TimescaleDB
On-premise
Prometheus
TimescaleDB

Integrations

What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.

Prometheus

Leader
17 total
  • Amazon SNS
  • Discord
  • incident.io
  • Jira
  • Mattermost
  • Microsoft Teams
  • OpsGenie
  • PagerDuty
  • Pushover
  • Rocket.Chat
  • Slack
  • Telegram
  • VictorOps
  • Webex
  • WeChat
  • Webhook
  • Email
Independently observed

TimescaleDB

7 total
  • Kafka
  • S3
  • Iceberg
  • AWS
  • Azure
  • Observability tools
  • Postgres ecosystem
Independently observed

Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.