Comparison
Lantern vs pgHero
pgHero is a great free, open-source tool for point-in-time Postgres snapshots. Lantern builds on that foundation with trends over time, deploy correlation, and a hosted dashboard you don't have to self-manage.
pgHero
Free, open-source Postgres dashboard
- ✓ Free and open source
- ✓ Point-in-time query stats
- ✓ Index suggestions
- ✓ Connection monitoring
- ✓ Self-hosted (you control the data)
- ✗ No trends over time
- ✗ No deploy correlation
- ✗ No hosted dashboard
- ✗ No composite health score
- Free (self-hosted)
Lantern
Hosted Postgres monitoring for Rails
- ✓ Query trends over 3-90 days
- ✓ Deploy correlation via webhook
- ✓ 0-100 health score dashboard
- ✓ Hosted — nothing to self-manage
- ✓ Actionable SQL/config recommendations
- ✓ Free tier included
- ✗ Not open source
- ✗ Data hosted externally
- Free — $29/mo (launch)
Feature-by-feature comparison
| Feature | pgHero | Lantern |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (OSS) | Free — $29/mo (launch) |
| Hosting | Self-hosted | Hosted (SaaS) |
| Query performance trends | Snapshot only | 3-90 day trends |
| Deploy correlation | ✗ | ✓ |
| Health score | ✗ | ✓ |
| Index suggestions | ✓ | ✓ |
| Config recommendations | ✗ | ✓ |
| Cache hit ratio monitoring | ✓ | ✓ |
| Bloat detection | ✓ | ✓ |
| Setup time | 15+ minutes | 5 minutes |
When to choose which
Choose pgHero if…
You want a free, open-source dashboard you can embed directly in your Rails app. You only need point-in-time snapshots and you're comfortable self-hosting and maintaining it yourself.
Choose Lantern if…
You want to see how query performance changes over time, correlate regressions to specific deploys, and get a daily health score with actionable recommendations — all without managing another piece of infrastructure.
Ready to try it?
Free tier: 1 database, 3-day history. Five minutes to install.
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