Glances: The Ultimate Real-Time System Monitoring Dashboard
Glances is the ultimate open-source system monitoring tool — track CPU, memory, disk, network, and containers from a single dashboard. 33k+ GitHub stars.
What Is Glances?
Glances is an open-source, cross-platform system monitoring tool that gives you a comprehensive real-time overview of your entire infrastructure. Often described as top/htop on steroids, Glances goes far beyond simple process monitoring — it tracks CPU usage, memory consumption, disk I/O, network bandwidth, running processes, logged-in users, system temperatures, voltages, fan speeds, and even container metrics from Docker and LXC.
Why Choose Glances?
With over 33,000 GitHub stars and a thriving community, Glances has become the go-to monitoring solution for sysadmins and developers who need a lightweight yet powerful dashboard. Unlike traditional tools that only show text-based output in a terminal, Glances offers multiple interfaces: a rich terminal UI, a responsive web interface, an XML-RPC API, and a RESTful API. It even includes a built-in MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, allowing AI coding assistants to query your system stats directly.
Key Features
Comprehensive Monitoring: CPU, memory, disk, network, processes, users, temperatures, voltages, fan speeds — everything in one place.
Container Support: Native monitoring for Docker and LXC containers with per-container resource usage.
Multiple Interfaces: Terminal UI, web UI, RESTful API, XML-RPC — access your data however you prefer.
Client/Server Mode: Monitor multiple remote machines from a single Glances server instance.
Export Capabilities: Export stats to CSV, InfluxDB, Prometheus, or any time-series database.
MCP Server: AI assistants can query system metrics through the built-in Model Context Protocol server.
Alert System: Set custom thresholds and receive alerts when resources exceed limits.
Self-Hosted and Private
Because Glances runs entirely on your own infrastructure, all monitoring data stays within your network. No data leaves your servers, no third-party cloud dependency, and no subscription fees. You own your monitoring pipeline completely.
Conclusion
Whether you are managing a single Raspberry Pi or a cluster of production servers, Glances provides the visibility you need to keep your systems healthy. It is free, open-source, and actively maintained by a dedicated community.