What Prometheus does

Prometheus is an open-source monitoring system and time-series database designed for cloud-native environments. Originally created at SoundCloud around 2014 and inspired by Google's internal Borgmon monitoring system, the project was open-sourced under the Apache 2 License on GitHub. It became the second project to graduate from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) after Kubernetes, providing it with open governance and institutional permanence under The Linux Foundation. The platform operates via a pull-based scrape model: Prometheus servers pull metrics from configured targets, store them in a dimensional data model where each time series is identified by a metric name plus key-value pairs, and expose them through PromQL, a purpose-built query and alerting language. Notable components include the Prometheus Server, Alertmanager (for notification routing and silencing), official client libraries for Go, Java/Scala, Python, Ruby, and Rust, hundreds of community-contributed exporters, Prometheus Agent Mode for remote-write-only deployments, and Remote Write/Read for federation and long-term storage. Native Kubernetes, Docker, and cloud service discovery, plus an OpenTelemetry OTLP receiver, integrate the project with the surrounding cloud-native ecosystem.

The business model is deliberately non-commercial: Prometheus is 100% open source under Apache 2 License with no pricing tiers, no managed offering, no sales motion, and no venture funding. The legal entity is "Prometheus Authors," a nonprofit-style community initiative governed by meritocratic open-source principles, not a traditional corporation. Distribution is direct via self-service download from GitHub and the documentation site prometheus.io, with community channels (GitHub, CNCF, mailing lists, Slack) serving the developer and operator audience. There are no named customer logos or enterprise contracts because the product is unlicensed at zero cost; end users are DevOps and SRE teams, cloud-native developers, AI development teams instrumenting AI workloads, and enterprise organizations running Kubernetes at scale. Strategic partnerships are ecosystem-level rather than commercial: CNCF, The Linux Foundation (trademark and IP oversight), and GitHub (hosting) function as governance and distribution partners. All monetization — where it exists — happens around the project rather than within it, through adjacent vendors offering managed Prometheus services, enterprise support, and SaaS dashboards that ingest Prometheus data.

Name

Prometheus

Legal name

Prometheus Authors

Website

https://prometheus.io

Company type

Private

Founded year

2014

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Prometheus is an open-source monitoring system and time-series database that pulls metrics from cloud-native services, stores them in a dimensional model queryable via PromQL, and alerts via Alertmanager. It serves DevOps, SRE, and cloud-native developer communities globally under CNCF governance.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Infrastructure Monitoring Software

NAICS

Computer Systems Design and Related Services (54151)

SIC

Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)

akta.pro primary industry

Embedded / Edge Databases (HDAEAAAM)

akta.pro secondary industry

Data Protection & Archiving (WORM, Long-Term Retention) (HDABAEAH)

Keywords

• Open source monitoring
• Time series database
• Metrics collection
• Cloud native observability
• Infrastructure alerting

Headquarters

HQ city

San Francisco

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Operations

Revenue model

1. Open Source Software Distribution: Prometheus is 100% open source under Apache 2 License with no commercial revenue model. All components are freely available on GitHub. The project is community-driven and maintained by volunteers and contributors through the CNCF.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels2 records

Marketing channels3 records

Core offering

Prometheus is an open-source monitoring system and time-series database that scrapes metrics from instrumented targets over HTTP using a pull-based model, stores them as multi-dimensional time series, and lets operators query and alert on them via PromQL. It ships with Alertmanager for decoupled alerting, official client libraries, and a large ecosystem of exporters, and is widely deployed in cloud-native and Kubernetes environments.

Product overview

Prometheus is an open-source monitoring system and time series database designed for the cloud native world. It operates as a single unified platform with multiple integrated components: the Prometheus Server (the core monitoring engine that scrapes, stores, and queries metrics), PromQL (the dimensional query language), Alertmanager (notification handling), official client libraries for instrumentation, and Prometheus Exporters for third-party system integration. The platform uses a pull-based model where the server scrapes metrics from configured targets, stores them with dimensional data model support, and enables alerting via PromQL-based rules. All components are available under Apache 2 License on GitHub, and Prometheus is a CNCF graduated project.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Prometheus Server Central monitoring server and time-series database that scrapes metrics from configured targets over HTTP, stores them as dimensional time series, and exposes them for querying via PromQL. For DevOps, SRE, and platform engineering teams running cloud-native workloads.
• Alertmanager Handles alerts generated by the Prometheus server, including deduplication, grouping, silencing, inhibition, and routing to receivers such as email, PagerDuty, or Slack. For operations teams that need reliable, decoupled alerting on monitored systems.
• PromQL Query Language A functional query language that allows filtering, aggregation, and arithmetic operations on multi-dimensional time-series data stored in Prometheus. Used by engineers and operators to build ad-hoc analyses, dashboards, and alert rules.
• Prometheus Client Libraries Official client libraries in Go, Python, Java, Ruby, Rust, .NET/C#, Node.js, PHP, Erlang, and other languages that let application developers instrument their code and expose Prometheus-formatted metrics endpoints. For application developers building services to be scraped by Prometheus.
• Prometheus Exporters Community-maintained exporters that translate metrics from third-party systems (databases, message brokers, hardware, OS, web servers, etc.) into the Prometheus exposition format so they can be scraped and stored alongside application metrics. For operators who need unified visibility across heterogeneous infrastructure.

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration5 records

Feature12 records

Partnerships

Three partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerPrometheus is a CNCF graduated project under open governance structure. All components are available under Apache 2 License. CNCF provides governance, trademark oversight, and long-term sustainability through the Linux Foundation.
• The Linux FoundationcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerThe Linux Foundation provides trademark and IP oversight for CNCF projects. Prometheus Authors 2014-2026 copyright is managed through CNCF under The Linux Foundation umbrella.
• GitHubcoreTechnology or IntegrationPrometheus uses GitHub for open source hosting, code repositories, issue tracking, and community collaboration. All components are available under Apache 2 License on GitHub.

Scale indicators5 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Emerging players

• Cortex: Cortex (now Grafana Mimir) is a horizontally scalable, multi-tenant Prometheus-compatible remote storage project. It directly addresses Prometheus's single-server architecture constraints for hyperscale users.
• Chronosphere: Chronosphere provides a managed Prometheus-based observability platform focused on cloud-native environments at scale. It directly competes by offering a commercial alternative to self-hosted Prometheus.
• Sysdig: Sysdig uses Prometheus as a core data source for its cloud security and monitoring platform, often bundled with Falco for runtime security. It overlaps with Prometheus in container and Kubernetes monitoring.
• Thanos: Thanos (now part of Grafana Mimir) extends Prometheus with long-term object storage and global querying. It is a directly comparable open-source complement addressing Prometheus's historical scaling limitations.

Broad incumbents

• Elastic (ELK Stack): Elastic provides the ELK Stack for logs, metrics, and APM and is frequently used alongside or as an alternative to Prometheus. It competes for the same observability budget with an integrated, queryable time-series engine.
• Splunk (Cisco): Splunk offers metrics, logs, and traces via the Observability Cloud suite and is frequently listed alongside Prometheus as a leading observability platform. It competes for enterprise monitoring spend with managed offerings.
• New Relic: New Relic offers an integrated observability platform spanning APM, infrastructure, logs, and browser monitoring. It competes with Prometheus on metrics collection in cloud-native environments.
• Datadog: Datadog is a full-stack observability platform offering managed metrics, logs, traces, and APM. It directly competes for the same DevOps/SRE budget that Prometheus serves, often via managed Prometheus ingestion.
• Dynatrace: Dynatrace provides AI-driven full-stack observability with automated instrumentation. It targets the same enterprise DevOps buyers as Prometheus, typically as a commercial alternative to self-hosted monitoring stacks.

Direct peers

• Grafana Labs: Grafana Labs maintains Grafana (the de facto visualization front-end for Prometheus) and operates Mimir, Loki, and Tempo as commercial extensions to the Prometheus stack. It is the closest commercial counterpart, monetizing the ecosystem Prometheus anchors.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• GitHubgithub.com/prometheus
• Xx.com/PrometheusIO

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Prometheus