vioscaleAI
Comparison

Prometheus vs TimescaleDB

On the evidence we track, Prometheus leads this comparison with a composite score of 67/100. Scores are only directly comparable because these tools share a category; the full breakdown and every source is below.

Prometheus full profile →TimescaleDB full profile →
Machine formatsMarkdownJSONGraphQLMarkdown is open. JSON and GraphQL need a free key.
★Prometheus67
TimescaleDB57
Score
vioscaleAI score
Prometheus67 / 100medium · 57%
TimescaleDB57 / 100medium · 62%
Pricing
Free tier
Prometheus✓
TimescaleDB✓
Model
Prometheusopen_source
TimescaleDBfreemium
Price level
Prometheusfree
TimescaleDBmid
Starting price
Prometheus–
TimescaleDB$30
Transparent
Prometheus✓
TimescaleDB✓
Integrations
Count
Prometheus60
TimescaleDB3
Security
Certifications
Prometheus–
TimescaleDBSOC 2 Type II
Disclosure policy
Prometheus✓
TimescaleDB✓
Gdpr
Prometheus✓
TimescaleDB✓
Hipaa
Prometheus–
TimescaleDB✓
Pci
Prometheus–
TimescaleDB✓
Scorecard
Prometheus8.1
TimescaleDB4.6
Soc2
Prometheus–
TimescaleDB✓
Trust center
Vulnerabilities
Reliability
Status page
Prometheus–
TimescaleDB✓
Adoption
Dependent repos
Prometheus5,467
TimescaleDB0
Github stars
Prometheus66,366
TimescaleDB23,634
Package downloads weekly
Prometheus11,748,542
TimescaleDB–
Activity
Commits last 30d
Prometheus100
TimescaleDB100
Release
Cadence days
Prometheus7
TimescaleDB12
History
Prometheus20 items
TimescaleDB20 items
License
Spdx
PrometheusApache-2.0
TimescaleDB–
Language
Primary
PrometheusGo
TimescaleDBC
Market
Availability
Content
Faq
Prometheus7 items
TimescaleDB7 items

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-
TimescaleDBContinuous aggregates
Retention / TTL
Prometheus-
TimescaleDBAutomatic
Storage
Compression (columnar / delta / Gorilla)
PrometheusXOR2 float chunk encoding
TimescaleDBRow-columnar with compression
Performance
High-cardinality handling
PrometheusStrong
TimescaleDBStrong
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 pull-based monitoring platform that periodically scrapes metrics from instrumented targets over HTTP and stores them in a time-series database. It provides PromQL for querying metrics and integrates with Alertmanager for rule-based alerting and incident notifications.

Independently observed

TimescaleDB

A PostgreSQL-based time-series database optimized to efficiently ingest and store massive volumes of continuously-generated sensor and machine data, with automatic data partitioning, columnar storage compression, and tiered storage for cost-effective long-term retention.

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

from $30/moUsage-basedFree tier30-day trial

From $30/month minimum compute. Storage from $0.177–$0.212/GB-month. 30-day free trial.

  • Performance$30/month minimum compute; $0.177/GB-month storage
    • 4 database services
    • Up to 16 TB disk storage per service
    • Single-node high-availability replicas
    • Performance Insights
    • Basic support (business hours)
  • Scale$36/month minimum compute; $0.212/GB-month storage
    • Unlimited tiered storage
    • Multi-node high-availability replicas
    • Integrations with observability tools
    • SAML single-sign-on
    • HIPAA compliance
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.

In common (1)
  • Kafka

Prometheus

Leader
65 total - 64 not shared
  • Amazon SNS
  • Discord
  • incident.io
  • Jira
  • Mattermost
  • Microsoft Teams
  • OpsGenie
  • PagerDuty
  • Pushover
  • Rocket.Chat
  • Slack
  • Telegram
  • VictorOps
  • Webex
  • WeChat
  • Webhook
  • Email
  • WeChat Work
  • Blackbox Exporter
  • Consul
  • Graphite
  • Memcached
  • MySQL
  • Node Exporter
  • +40 more
Independently observed

TimescaleDB

9 total - 8 not shared
  • S3
  • Iceberg
  • AWS
  • Azure
  • Observability tools
  • Postgres ecosystem
  • Tableau
  • Power BI
Independently observed
Still deciding?

Prometheus or TimescaleDB: which one depends on you

A composite score cannot know your constraints. Describe them and both get re-weighted against what you actually need, with the evidence behind every position.

Free to run, no account needed to start. How the evaluation works

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