osTicket
Prometheus
| Feature | osTicket | Prometheus |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free / from $12/mo | Free only |
| Free Plan | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Rating | 4 / 5 | 4.5 / 5 |
| Best For | small-businesses, budget-conscious-teams, self-hosted-advocates, it-departments | devops-engineers, sre-teams, kubernetes-users, infrastructure-teams |
| Founded | 2003 | 2012 |
| Ticket Management | ✓ | ✗ |
| Email Piping | ✓ | ✗ |
| Custom Fields | ✓ | ✗ |
| Sla Management | ✓ | ✗ |
| Agent Collision Avoidance | ✓ | ✗ |
| Knowledge Base | ✓ | ✗ |
| Metrics Collection | ✗ | ✓ |
| Alerting | ✗ | ✓ |
| Promql | ✗ | ✓ |
| Service Discovery | ✗ | ✓ |
| Grafana Integration | ✗ | ✓ |
| Multi Dimensional Data | ✗ | ✓ |
✓ osTicket Pros
- Completely free self-hosted version
- Active open-source community
- Highly customizable
- Supports multiple departments
✗ osTicket Cons
- Dated user interface
- Requires server management
- Limited automation compared to paid tools
✓ Prometheus Pros
- Free and open-source
- Powerful query language
- Great Kubernetes integration
- Active community
✗ Prometheus Cons
- No built-in long-term storage
- Complex setup
- Steep learning curve
The Verdict
osTicket is built for small businesses and budget conscious teams, with a focus on ticket-management and email-piping. Prometheus targets devops engineers and sre teams and leads with metrics-collection and alerting.
Prometheus uses custom enterprise pricing, while osTicket starts at $12/mo — a tangible advantage for teams with a fixed budget.
Both offer free plans, so you can test each with your real workflow before committing to a subscription.
Prometheus edges out on user ratings (4.5 vs 4). While both are well-regarded, that gap reflects real differences in user satisfaction worth considering.
Bottom line: Prometheus has a slight overall edge — but if completely free self-hosted version matters most to you, osTicket may still be the right call.