Prometheus
Weights & Biases
| Feature | Prometheus | Weights & Biases |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free only | Free / from $50/mo |
| Free Plan | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Rating | 4.5 / 5 | 4.7 / 5 |
| Best For | devops-engineers, sre-teams, kubernetes-users, infrastructure-teams | ml-engineers, research-teams, ai-companies, data-scientists |
| Founded | 2012 | 2017 |
| Metrics Collection | ✓ | ✗ |
| Alerting | ✓ | ✗ |
| Promql | ✓ | ✗ |
| Service Discovery | ✓ | ✗ |
| Grafana Integration | ✓ | ✗ |
| Multi Dimensional Data | ✓ | ✗ |
| Experiment Tracking | ✗ | ✓ |
| Model Registry | ✗ | ✓ |
| Sweeps | ✗ | ✓ |
| Artifacts | ✗ | ✓ |
| Reports | ✗ | ✓ |
| Launch | ✗ | ✓ |
✓ 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
✓ Weights & Biases Pros
- Best-in-class experiment tracking
- Beautiful visualizations
- Great collaboration features
- Generous free tier
✗ Weights & Biases Cons
- Learning curve for full platform
- Can be expensive for large teams
- Requires integration work
The Verdict
Prometheus is built for devops engineers and sre teams, with a focus on metrics-collection and alerting. Weights & Biases targets ml engineers and research teams and leads with experiment-tracking and model-registry.
Prometheus uses custom enterprise pricing, while Weights & Biases starts at $50/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.
This is a genuinely close comparison. If you can, sign up for both free trials (where available) and run a one-week test with your actual team tasks before deciding.