# Mail-in-a-Box vs prometheus

> Two self-hosted projects, compared on the numbers selfhost.directory tracks live: score, popularity, release cadence and setup effort.

| | Mail-in-a-Box | prometheus |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 72/100 | 90/100 ✓ |
| Rank in category | #3 of 16 in Mail Server | #1 of 104 in Monitoring & observability |
| GitHub stars | 15 450 | 66 828 ✓ |
| Stars, last 30 days | +32 | +632 ✓ |
| Stable releases, 12 months | 4 | 16 ✓ |
| Latest release | v77 · 26 Sept 2026 | v3.15.1 · 21 Oct 2026 ✓ |
| Setup | Moderate | Moderate ✓ |
| Official Docker image | No | Yes ✓ |
| License | CC0-1.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Main language | Python | Go |

## Which one should you pick?

prometheus scores 90/100 against 72/100 for Mail-in-a-Box, so it is the safer default.

prometheus ships more often: 16 stable releases in the past year, against 4 for Mail-in-a-Box.

prometheus is growing faster right now (+632 stars in 30 days).

## Details

- [Mail-in-a-Box](https://selfhost.directory/project/mail-in-a-box) (markdown: https://selfhost.directory/project/mail-in-a-box.md)
- [prometheus](https://selfhost.directory/project/prometheus) (markdown: https://selfhost.directory/project/prometheus.md)

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Source: https://selfhost.directory/compare/mail-in-a-box-vs-prometheus