Tink vs Pushgateway
Prometheus Pushgateway is a parking lot: short-lived jobs push gauges they cannot serve, and Prometheus scrapes :9091 later. That is not a mechanic. Tink installs in one command, watches the Linux server, explains what is wrong, and helps you fix it.
Pushgateway stores the last push. Tink answers “why is this VPS sick?”
Accidental sysadmins land on Pushgateway because every Prometheus batch-job diagram ends with a push. Then the volume fills, nginx dies, and the last cron gauge is still green — nothing expired. A filling /var is a Tink warning; it is not a Pushgateway job until a script already pushed that number.
Tink is the other job: detect the issue on the machine, say why it happened in plain English, propose the command, and run it only after you approve. Keep Pushgateway if you already operate Prometheus and need last-push metrics from batch jobs. Use Tink if you run Linux servers and want a mechanic.
| Feature | Tink | Pushgateway |
|---|---|---|
| Setup time | 30 seconds (one curl | sh command) | Hours — Prometheus, Pushgateway, job grouping keys, scrape config, and a delete story for metrics that never expire |
| What you get | Working monitoring, diagnosis, and approved fixes | A :9091 parking lot. The box is still yours to diagnose and SSH |
| Pricing | Free (Scout) / $9 / $29 per machine per month | Free software (Apache 2.0). You still pay for Prometheus, Alertmanager, and the engineer who owns stale grouping keys |
| Hidden costs | None — fully managed | instance label collisions, persistence files, admin API deletes, and a second tool that actually watches the server |
| Monitoring approach | Agent on the server — CPU, disk, services, logs, certs, ports | None — Pushgateway never scrapes the host. It only stores what a job already pushed |
| Configuration | None after install — heuristics and AI | job/instance grouping, --persistence.file, --web.enable-admin-api, and which stale series still graphs as healthy |
| Plain-English diagnosis | Yes — AI explains root cause, impact, and fix | No — Pushgateway serves last-push samples. You still SSH in to learn why |
| Fix execution | Proposes and executes approved commands with an audit trail | Storage only — Pushgateway cannot free disk, restart nginx, or rotate a cert |
| Alerting | Built-in across 8 channels | None — Prometheus must scrape Pushgateway and a PromQL rule must fire before anyone is paged |
| Predictive alerts | Yes — disk fills in ~6 days, memory and CPU trends | Only if you already wrote a PromQL forecast on pushed gauges. Pushgateway does not predict |
| SSH brute-force detection | Built-in — parses auth.log every scan | Only if a job pushed auth failures, Prometheus scraped them, and a rule fired |
| Machine offline detection | Agent presence monitoring with multi-channel alerts | Stale series stay green — a dead cron still looks last-pushed until you delete the group |
| Public status page | Shareable URL with 90-day history | None — Pushgateway has no customer-facing status page |
| Weekly fleet digest | Automated Monday digest + daily brief when issues are open | None — a last-push timestamp is not a plain-English fleet narrative |
| On-call tracking | Built-in /oncall command + incident acknowledgment | Not included — wire Prometheus into PagerDuty or another incident tool |
| Conversation interface | Telegram, WhatsApp, web dashboard, CLI | curl POST to :9091. No mechanic you text when /var filled and the last push was yesterday |
| Learning curve | None — works after install | Steep — Prometheus, grouping keys, stale metric hygiene, and when not to use Pushgateway at all |
| Best for | Freelancers, small teams, accidental sysadmins (1-50 Linux servers) | Teams that already run Prometheus and need last-push metrics from batch jobs, not a sick-VPS mechanic |
When Pushgateway is the right choice
Keep Pushgateway when you already want that exact job:
- Short-lived batch jobs — a cron or CI step cannot be scraped, and you need last-push gauges in Prometheus.
- An existing Prometheus stack — scrape configs already exist, and someone owns grouping keys and stale deletes.
- Service-discovery gaps — the job has no stable target, so a parking lot is the only scrape path.
- Hosts that only push numbers — you already run Prometheus, not a sick-box SSH loop.
The real cost of “just run Pushgateway”
Pushgateway is in every Prometheus batch-job diagram. A working ops loop for five Linux boxes is not:
- A last-push gauge still means you SSH in and change the box by hand
- Host fill, nginx, certs, and SSH brute-force never appear unless a job pushed those signals and a rule fired
- A filling /var is a Tink disk warning on every scan — Pushgateway will stay quiet until a script already knew
- A dead cron still looks last-pushed until someone deletes the group — stale green is the famous footgun
For a 5-server team, Tink Mechanic at $45/month is cheaper than Pushgateway plus the engineer who keeps Prometheus scrapes and grouping keys alive, and every scan includes a diagnosis a quiet :9091 UI will not type.
No grouping-key homework. No stale green. One command install.
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