explaingit

google/cadvisor

Analysis updated 2026-06-21

19,126GoAudience · ops devopsComplexity · 3/5Setup · easy

TLDR

A Google tool that monitors every running container in real time, showing exactly how much CPU, memory, network, and disk each one is using via a dashboard and Prometheus-compatible API.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((cAdvisor))
    What it does
      CPU monitoring
      Memory tracking
      Network stats
    Tech stack
      Go
      Docker
      Prometheus
    Use cases
      Container diagnostics
      Cluster monitoring
      Performance tuning
    Integrations
      Kubernetes
      Grafana
      Web dashboard
Click or tap to explore — scroll the page freely

Code map

Detail Auto

An interactive map of this repo's files and how they connect — its source is parsed live in your browser. Click Visualize to build it.

filefunction / class

What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Find which container on a server is consuming too much memory by viewing real-time usage graphs in the built-in dashboard

USE CASE 2

Feed per-container resource metrics into Prometheus to power alerting and Grafana dashboards

USE CASE 3

Run cAdvisor on every node in a Kubernetes cluster to get cluster-wide container visibility

USE CASE 4

Diagnose performance problems in a Dockerized application by inspecting historical CPU and network usage

What is it built with?

GoDockerPrometheusKubernetes

How does it compare?

google/cadvisorbettercap/bettercapprobelabs/goreplay
Stars19,12619,19819,288
LanguageGoGoGo
Setup difficultyeasymoderatemoderate
Complexity3/54/53/5
Audienceops devopsops devopsops devops

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min

Launch with a single Docker run command, Kubernetes integration requires a DaemonSet deployment.

In plain English

cAdvisor (short for Container Advisor) is a tool from Google that watches your running containers and tells you exactly how much CPU, memory, network, and disk each one is consuming in real time. If you run applications inside containers, using Docker or a similar system, you need a way to see what those containers are actually doing on the machine. cAdvisor fills that gap by running as a background process alongside your containers, continuously collecting resource usage data and making it available through a web dashboard and a programmable API. It works by reading low-level system information about each container, then organizing that data into historical usage graphs and statistics. You can view the built-in web interface in a browser or connect monitoring tools (like Prometheus) to pull the data automatically. You would use cAdvisor when you are running containers on a server and want to diagnose performance problems, spot a container that is eating too much memory, or feed resource metrics into a larger monitoring setup. It integrates directly with Kubernetes as well, where it can run on every node in a cluster to give cluster-wide visibility. The project is written in Go and can be launched in seconds as a Docker container itself.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Show me the Docker run command to start cAdvisor and monitor all containers on a Linux server
Prompt 2
How do I configure Prometheus to scrape cAdvisor metrics and display them in a Grafana dashboard?
Prompt 3
Write a Kubernetes DaemonSet manifest to deploy cAdvisor on every node in my cluster
Prompt 4
How do I use the cAdvisor HTTP API to get the current CPU and memory usage of a specific container by name?

Frequently asked questions

What is cadvisor?

A Google tool that monitors every running container in real time, showing exactly how much CPU, memory, network, and disk each one is using via a dashboard and Prometheus-compatible API.

What language is cadvisor written in?

Mainly Go. The stack also includes Go, Docker, Prometheus.

How hard is cadvisor to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated easy, with roughly 5min to a first successful run.

Who is cadvisor for?

Mainly ops devops.

Open on GitHub → Explain another repo

This repo across BitVibe Labs

Scan in gitsafehub Deploy in gitdeployhub google on gitmyhub

Verify against the repo before relying on details.