Cortex vs RRDtool
| Cortex | RRDtool | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | No | No |
| Free trial | No | No |
| Paid from | — | — |
| Open source | No | No |
| Platforms | Linux, macOS, Windows | Windows, Linux |
| Deployment | self_hosted | self_hosted |
| SQL support | No | — |
| Retention policies | Yes | Yes |
| Horizontal scaling | Yes | — |
| Query languages | PromQL | — |
| Ingestion methods | Prometheus remote_write; OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) | command line; standard-input pipes; Perl; Python; Ruby; Lua; Tcl |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
Both are listed in Best Time-Series Databases. On Everything Xiaomi, Cortex scores higher on our published basis.