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Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs Prometheus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Google Cloud's operations s...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
24th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (31st), Cloud Monitoring Software (23rd)
Prometheus
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is 1.2%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prometheus is 3.4%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Anand_Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers reliable Ops Agent and logging transport feature with easy third-party integrations
As part of our company, we implemented several changes in our log analytics pattern, including the storage and procurement process. Earlier, before implementing the solution, our company was able to procure only one year of data, but later, we came to the three-year mark. Around 15-20% reduction has been witnessed in the total analytic consumption of our company. The aforementioned result was possible because the solution allowed the creation of a dashboard where factors like storage costs, proportion of logs, and logs presence in a storage bucket or BigQuery can all be checked. Earlier all logs were stored in a raw storage, but currently our company is able to move logs in table bucket that contributes towards cost savings.
MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Free to use and provides valuable monitoring capabilities
Prometheus is a scalable and flexible tool that I can deploy on any cloud platform. It is free to use and provides valuable monitoring capabilities. It allows me to save money by avoiding costs associated with AWS native services like CloudWatch or Amazon Prometheus. The ability to deploy on any cloud platform or environment, including Kubernetes, is a major advantage.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Provides visibility into the performance uptime."
"Offers a valuable logging transport feature"
"We find the solution to be stable."
"I like the monitoring feature."
"Our company has a corporate account for Google Cloud and so our systems and clusters integrate really well."
"The most valuable feature is the multi-cloud integration, where there is support for both GCP and AWS."
"Google's technical support is very good."
"The cloud login enables us to get our logs from the different platforms that we currently use."
"The most valuable features of Prometheus for metrics collection and monitoring are its stability, robustness, and rich set of features."
"The most valuable features of Prometheus are the many functions available. The functions are helpful for understanding the behavior of applications and infrastructure."
"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."
"The most valuable feature of Prometheus is its ability to collect metrics."
"The solution is useful to collect huge metrics."
"The sky is the limit because the solution is a flexible open box that can be used vastly to do anything you need to monitor applications."
"The solution offers an easy way to install and scratch values."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
 

Cons

"Lacking sufficient operations documentation."
"The process of logging analytics can be improved"
"This solution could be improved if it offered the ability to analyze charts, such as a solution like Kibana."
"If I want to track any round-trip or breakdowns of my response times, I'm not able to get it. My request goes through various levels of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and comes back to my client machine. Suppose that my request has taken 10 seconds overall, so if I want to break it down, to see where the delay is happening within my architecture, I am not able to find that out using Stackdriver."
"The logging functionality could be better."
"It could be more stable."
"It could be even more automated."
"While we are satisfied with the overall performance, in certain cases we must add additional metrics and additional tools like Grafana and Dynatrace."
"The setup could be made easier for new users because it requires a bit of advance knowledge or experience."
"The initial setup of Prometheus is complex and rated one out of five in ease of setup."
"The solution's error handling part could be improved."
"The scalability must be improved."
"Prometheus requires improvement on the query side."
"If you are not quite technical, it can be pretty hard to understand the way it works and how to query data in Prometheus."
"The product must improve its documentation."
"I would like to see improvement in the analysis tools and customization features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a basic standard license without any additional costs."
"The cost could be lower."
"The cost of using Stackdriver depends on usage."
"The product is free."
"The price of Prometheus is good, it is affordable because it is open source and there is no cost to it. You put it on your own server and the costs incurred completely depend on how you set it up."
"The product is expensive compared to Datadog."
"Prometheus is an open-source tool."
"It is an open-source tool."
"The solution is open source."
"My company uses the open-source version of the product."
"The tool is open-sourced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Google Stackdriver?
If the errors are caught early in the interface, it would be easier for users to manage. The process of logging analytics can be improved.
What is your primary use case for Google Stackdriver?
I use the solution for logging, defining alerts, and monitoring. Our company's Java and Python logging teams mainly use it.
What do you like most about Prometheus?
The most valuable feature of Prometheus is its ability to collect metrics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Prometheus?
Prometheus is cost-effective for me as it is free. Using cloud-native alternatives like Amazon Prometheus would incur charges.
What is your primary use case for Prometheus?
I use Prometheus for monitoring purposes in IT infrastructure. It is particularly useful for environments using Kubernetes, as it monitors ports, containers, instances, and applications effectively.
 

Also Known As

Google Stackdriver, Stackdriver Monitoring, Stackdriver Logging, Google Cloud Monitoring
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uber, Batterii, Q42, Dovetail Games
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. Prometheus and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.