Zabbix vs Prometheus: which tool should you choose

Choosing the right monitoring tool can significantly impact the reliability, scalability, and efficiency of your infrastructure. Two of the most powerful and widely adopted open-source tools in this space are Zabbix and Prometheus. While they share a similar goal of monitoring IT systems, their architectures, use cases and philosophies are quite different.

In this article, we compare Zabbix vs Prometheus, helping you understand when to choose each and how they can fit into your monitoring strategy.

Zabbix vs Prometheus: overview of two open-source leaders

Zabbix is an enterprise-grade open-source monitoring solution that has been around since 2001. It’s designed for comprehensive infrastructure monitoring: servers, networks, applications, databases, and more. Zabbix supports SNMP, IPMI, JMX, HTTP, agent-based and agentless monitoring, making it ideal for traditional IT and hybrid environments.

Prometheus, on the other hand, emerged in 2012 from SoundCloud, tailored for modern, cloud-native environments. It’s built around a time-series database and designed to pull metrics from exporters over HTTP. It excels in environments like Kubernetes, containerized applications, and microservices.

Related article: Why choose Open Source?

Data collection and architecture differences

Zabbix uses a centralized polling model with agents or standard protocols like SNMP. It supports active and passive agents, Zabbix proxies for distributed monitoring, and built-in templates for quick onboarding.

Prometheus uses a pull-based model, scraping metrics via HTTP endpoints exposed by exporters. It stores data in a local time-series database and is designed for high-frequency metric collection.

Dashboards and visualisation capabilities

Zabbix provides built-in visualisation tools including:

• Native dashboards

• Graphs and trends

• Network maps

• SLA widgets and screens

Prometheus does not include a dashboard by default. Instead, it integrates tightly with Grafana, which is the de facto standard for time-series visualisation. This allows highly customisable, real-time dashboards with alert overlays and query-based panels.

Related article: Embracing Cloud Solutions for Public Services

Alerting and automation

Zabbix features a mature alerting system:

• Triggers with thresholds, trends, or logic

• Multi-step escalations

• Notifications via email, SMS, webhook, Slack, MS Teams, and more

• Remote commands for automated responses

Prometheus handles alerts through Alertmanager, a separate component that manages:

• Alert grouping and deduplication

• Silencing and inhibition

• Routing to integrations like PagerDuty, Opsgenie, Slack, etc.

While Prometheus is more flexible in dynamic environments, Zabbix is often easier to configure for traditional infrastructure.

Best use cases for each tool

Zabbix and Prometheus: can you use both?

Yes. In fact, many large organisations deploy both tools:

• Prometheus for metrics from dynamic environments (e.g., containers, services)

• Zabbix for infrastructure, network, and external systems

There are exporters available to bridge data:

• Prometheus data to Zabbix (via Zabbix external checks)

• Zabbix data to Prometheus (via exporters or APIs)

Using both tools together can provide full-stack visibility.

Related article: How IT Managers waste resources by not automating operations

How Syone helps you choose and implement the right monitoring stack

As an Open Source Competence Center and experienced Zabbix and Prometheus integrator, Syone helps organisations:

• Assess monitoring requirements based on infrastructure and goals

• Design hybrid monitoring stacks using Zabbix, Prometheus, Grafana, and Alertmanager

• Implement, configure, and optimise open-source observability platforms

• Develop custom exporters, templates, and dashboards

• Deliver managed services and 24/7 support

Whether you’re running a legacy data centre, modern cloud-native apps, or both, Syone ensures that your monitoring strategy is efficient, scalable, and future-ready.

Explore our open-source monitoring services or contact us to speak with our experts.