{"data":{"slug":"node-exporter","name":"node_exporter","tagline":"Apache-2.0 official Prometheus host-metrics exporter","category":"observability","categoryName":"Observability","url":"https://prometheus.io/docs/guides/node-exporter/","github":"https://github.com/prometheus/node_exporter","pricing":"open-source","hook":"node_exporter is the Prometheus project's own agent for machine metrics: run it on a Linux or *NIX host and it serves CPU, memory, disk, filesystem and network metrics on port 9100 for Prometheus to scrape.","whatsGood":"Apache-2.0 (prometheus/node_exporter), release v1.12.1, maintained since 2013. A single Go binary with pluggable collectors you can switch on or off with flags, packaged in EPEL, available as an Ansible role and as a container image. It is the data source behind most standard Linux host dashboards. ★~13.8k.","theCatch":"It only exposes metrics: you still need a Prometheus server (or a compatible scraper) to store them and something like Grafana to view and alert on them. Running it in a container needs host networking, the host PID namespace and a read-only bind mount of / with --path.rootfs, or it ends up measuring the container instead of the machine. Windows needs the separate windows_exporter, and NVIDIA GPUs need dcgm-exporter.","verdict":"The first thing to install on any Linux box you want to watch with Prometheus.","addedAt":"2026-10-17","featured":false,"domain":"Observability","subSpecialty":"Metrics","subcategory":"Metrics","tags":["self-host","permissive","scraping","observability","active"],"capabilities":["metrics","prometheus","host"],"surfaces":["Self-host"],"ecosystem":["Go"],"licenseModel":"Apache-2.0","githubStars":13858,"starsPerWeek":20,"access":"free","archived":false,"repo":{"createdAt":"2013-04-18","pushedAt":"2026-10-15","license":"Apache-2.0","archived":false,"checkedAt":"2026-10-19"}},"related":[{"slug":"sentry","name":"Sentry","tagline":"Error tracking that actually helps"},{"slug":"grafana","name":"Grafana","tagline":"Dashboards for everything observable"},{"slug":"prometheus","name":"Prometheus","tagline":"Time-series metrics for cloud-native"},{"slug":"opentelemetry","name":"OpenTelemetry","tagline":"Vendor-neutral observability framework"},{"slug":"datadog","name":"Datadog","tagline":"Unified observability platform"}],"links":{"self":"/api/gems/node-exporter","html":"/gems/node-exporter","markdown":"/gems/node-exporter.md","category":"/api/gems?category=observability","categoryPage":"/stacks/observability"}}