Cortex vs Prometheus
| Cortex | Prometheus | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Free trial | No | No |
| Paid from | — | Free |
| Open source | No | No |
| Platforms | Linux, macOS, Windows | Linux, macOS, self-hosted, Web, Windows |
| Deployment | self_hosted | self_hosted |
| SQL support | No | No |
| Retention policies | Yes | Yes |
| Horizontal scaling | Yes | No |
| Query languages | PromQL | PromQL |
| Ingestion methods | Prometheus remote_write; OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) | HTTP pull scraping; Pushgateway; Remote Write; OpenMetrics backfilling |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
Both are listed in Best Time-Series Databases. On Samsung Mobile US Press, Prometheus scores higher on our published basis.