Project Mercury alternatives

Free 23 alternatives

Official website

Project Mercury is an easy-to-use Windows process monitoring and CPU tweak that lets you allocate CPU power priority to certain tasks in order to improve their performance. By installing a kernel extension, you can tell that certain processes should run at a higher priority. It’s very similar to how you can configure the nice value of a program with the renice command. The difference comes from how the Mercury tool works; instead of using a threshold for people who want fine-grained control over exactly how much CPU a process can be allotted.

Mercury lets you set a threshold of CPU % that programs should use relative to one another, essentially allowing you to have more control over what you use at what time. When an application’s CPU usage is above the threshold, that app will remain in the foreground. All in all, Project Mercury is a great tool that you can consider among its alternatives.

Ranked alternatives

1
LXTaskFree
LXTask is a lightweight task manager for Windows that lets you monitor and close any unresponsive application running in the foreground or background. You don’t need to install it on your system. You can just use it when you open the tool. LXTask features a task list, Command-line interface tool, Startup settings editor, System monitor, Application information viewer, Logout settings editor, Shutdown settings editor, Help Viewer, and more.
The tool is a very lightweight desktop environment that has very low memory and disk footprint. It is meant to be run on older computers and slower hardware. All in all, LXTask is a great tool that you can consider among its alternatives.
LXTask alternatives
2
KillSwitchFree
KillSwitch is a system monitoring software that uses a sophisticated set of rules that determine the criteria for monitoring a process, identifying when a process is potentially unsafe, and alerting the user. The program provides audio, video, file system, and process monitoring capabilities that help security teams identify the actions of malicious users and software. KillSwitch captures data from endpoint systems and sends it to a centralized server where it can be analyzed by security staff to help detect suspicious or compromised behavior.
The software is designed to monitor the physical and virtual environment by visually displaying critical security information in the event that a threat is detected. It also delivers an in-depth view of the host system, providing users with alert notifications, real-time process scans, file integrity monitoring, and root cause analysis. The application supports several methods to terminate processes, including force kill, close program window, and more.
The application provides a list of processes that are currently active, including their description and path; it also offers the possibility to view a log of all the changes made during the last 60 days in order to help administrators identify suspicious activities taking place on their network. All in all, KillSwitch is a great tool that you can consider among its alternatives.
KillSwitch alternatives
3
Kiwi application monitorFree
Kiwi application monitor is a utility that allows you to look up and control the Windows processes happening in the foreground and background. You can use it as a system monitor, process explorer, registry editor, file manager, event logger, and much more. It includes a fully customizable user interface with each feature optionally visible or hidden as you prefer. Kiwi application monitor can display plenty of information about the applications you run, including useful information (Title, Description, and Company name), Memory consumption, CPU consumption, etc.
You can also view the amount of data sent and received by your applications (via Internet and network) and record your keyboard and mouse activity into an easy-to-read report in CSV format. In short, the tool can monitor multiple programs, services, processes, and users, display a list of opened files, sockets, and handles, and display the log Windows messages. All in all, the Kiwi application is a great tool that you can consider among its alternatives.
Kiwi application monitor alternatives
4
Security Process ExplorerFree
Security Process Explorer is an advanced task manager application that you can use for Windows process management to see the programs and processes along with the file name, directory path, description, CPU usage. The program comes with a built-in process filter and can be used to view all running programs and processes or just the ones that contain certain strings in their names or paths. Processes are listed in order of CPU usage. This feature is useful for quickly determining which processes consume most of the system resources.
Security Process Explorer has rich functionality that lets you analyze process behavior and control processes. It can also be used as a basic task manager. Moreover, you can also use this to shut down non-responsive processes running either in the background or foreground. All in all, Security Process Explorer is a great tool that you can consider among its alternatives.
Security Process Explorer alternatives
5
Battle Encoder ShiraseFree
Battle Encoder Shirase is a lightweight utility that lets you control CPU usage of processes and applications and limit their priority to cool down your CPU. The software is equipped with such features as monitoring how many programs are using the CPU, controlling per-process CPU usage, and switching among profiles without having to log out or restart the computer. The program is also accessible from a drop-down menu which makes it very convenient.
You can instantly get your CPU under control with just one click and prevent your PC from overheating. Highlighting Features include monitoring in real-time, a monitoring graph that will help you instantly find out the per-process CPU usage of your PC, Full control through priority, Full control through temperature and limit. All in all, Battle Encoder Shirase is a great tool that you can consider among its alternatives.
Battle Encoder Shirase alternatives
6
Mz CPU AcceleratorFree
Mz CPU Accelerator is a tool that lets you control and change the priority of the background and foreground tasks by allocating more or less CPU power. This can be a big help on slower machines such as netbooks, which often try to spare a small percentage of their CPU power to run background tasks. By allotting more CPU power to the foreground application, it will render more smoothly and will allow you to play your games, edit your movies and listen to your music without any delays.
Windows provides the option to set background processes to low priority using Task Manager’s “Set Affinity” feature. Many games and multimedia applications depend on this feature, but it does not work all the time accurately. That’s where this tool comes in handy. All in all, Mz CPU Accelerator is a great tool that you can consider among its alternatives.
Mz CPU Accelerator alternatives
7
ProcessesPaid
Processes is a tool that gives you an overview of all processes running on your Mac. You can kill processes that are not responding, change the priority of processes, check out their running time, and much more. It provides both a wide overview of the activity on your system and a detailed list for each process as well as deep access to each process’ performance, with real-time charts and statistics.
The Overview tab displays information about how many processes are running, how many bytes they use, and how much CPU they take up. The Ram and CPU charts help you identify which processes are using the most resources in real-time, and allow you to easily locate resource-intensive processes that you might want to close or quit launching. All in all, Processes is a great tool that you can consider among its alternatives.
Processes alternatives
8
SterJo Task ManagerFree
SterJo Task Manager is an advanced tool that helps you manage the Windows running processes and get details on everything that’s running on your computer. The program has two modes: the standard Windows mode and the advanced mode. While in the standard Windows mode, SterJo Task Manager displays only a small window with buttons that are meant to start the programs that are currently running on your computer.
SterJo Task Manager allows you to see what exactly is running at any time, see detailed information about each process such as its name, CPU usage, memory usage, and permissions, and then kill or suspend any process with one click. The application grants you more control over running processes than ever before and helps you deal with those that slow down your computer or spy on you. All in all, SterJo Task Manager is a great tool that you can consider among its alternatives.
SterJo Task Manager alternatives
9
NmonFree
Nmon is a Nigel performance Monitor designed for Linux and provides tools that perform with the same efficiency on nmon for AIX. It is a benchmark tool, system administrator, and tuner that provides you with a lot of essential information regarding performance in a single try. The data output can be in two ways, namely On Screen and saving data to a .csv file.
Through the On-screen mode, you can display statistics for resources, CPU, NFS, network, top processes, and more without hassle. The second method comes in handy for longer-term data capture and analysis. You can use the nmonchart, provided by the website for the generation of a Google chart webpage.
This can be used along with the nmon Analyser Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, whose functionality is to open the nmon output file and initiate the creation of several graphs automatically to enable you to read or write performance reports. You can filter the data or put it into an rrd database without restrictions. The data can be placed into an rrd or any other database of your choice for a personal analysis.
Nmon alternatives
10
PsutilFree
Psutil (process and system utilities) is a freeware and multi-platform library that you can use to get statistical information regarding system utilization and running processes in Python without hassle. It is compatible with several platforms such as AIX, macOS, Sun Solaris, Linux, Microsoft Windows, NetBSD, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD. Through the software, you can get a glimpse of the currents state of system utilization of the built-in hardware like sensors, CPU, network, memory, and disks. It comes in handy for the management of running processes, system monitoring, and limiting and profiling process resources. The library successfully executes many capabilities/functionalities provided by command-line tools in classic Unix, including ifconfig, ps, netstat, top, and Isof.
Psutil alternatives
11
GtopFree
Gtop is an open-source and easy-to-use system monitoring dashboard for Terminal developed using JavaScript. It allows you to keep an eye on the active processes and CPU History, Memory and Swap History, Memory, and Network history. All the information is displayed on a single screen, and you can scroll through the list of processes to see each one. The requirements for running the solution include Windows, Linux, or Mac OSX, and Node.js version 8+. The installation can be completed through the npm command or Docker. Once it is installed, you can launch the solution by entering the gtop command.
Gtop alternatives
12
IftopFree
Iftop is a command-line system monitor released under the General Public License and written in the C programming language. Its purpose is to provide a list of network connections to the end-user. The list is updated frequently, making it easy for you to view the latest data without hassle. It arranges the connections by bandwidth usage and only displays the “top” consumers of the bandwidth. According to the official website, the goal of iftop is to offer network usage information.
You can use it to get answers to various problems related to the network, like the reason for the poor performance of the ADSL link. The system monitor works by first listening to the network traffic on a named interface and then afterward provides you with a table showing the ongoing bandwidth usage prioritized by pair of hosts.
Iftop alternatives
13
VtopFree
Vtop is an open-source and robust terminal activity monitoring tool that makes it easy for you to track memory and CPU usage. Some of the command line tools out there make it difficult to view CPU usage, but this problem is solved by vtop, and now you can easily check usage across multi-process applications.
Besides that, it clearly shows memory usage and spikes over time. The memory and CPU usage charts are drawn and shown using Unicode braille characters. The best feature is that it combines processes with similar names together. It is written in Node.js, which along with NPM, is a necessary prerequisite for installation.
Vtop alternatives
14
AtopFree
Atop is a useful tool for Linux server performance analysis that is designed to report and log what each server process is doing. The best feature is that it keeps running in the background and can stay that way for a maximum of 28 days to enable long-term server analysis. The benefits provided to the end-user include displaying resource usage of each and every process, even those that have been previously closed or completed, thread monitoring within processes and skipping unused processes, prioritizing crucial resources with red color, and removing or adding columns depending on the size of the display window. Another advantage is that the netatop kernel module is used to monitor network bandwidth and TCP and UDP.
Atop alternatives
15
IotopFree
Iotop (Input/Output top) is a Linux command that once executed, shows you the disk I/O usage details, making them easy to monitor. The best feature is that it also retrieves data about existing IO utilization by processes and shows them to you in a table view. The command will not work without kernel modules. It is written in Python and makes like much easier for system administrators by allowing them to track down the particular process responsible for increased disk I/O writes/reads. Before using it, you must ensure that the system has a python interpreter. The displayed output bears a striking resemblance to the top command.
Iotop alternatives
16
PySimpleSOAPFree
PySimpleSOAP (Python Simple Soap Library) is an open-source and easy-to-use library developed for client and server web services interfaces with the goal to be non-complex and easy to manage while providing the required functionality. The developers modeled it after PHP Soap Extension and also added the same functionality, and with the passage of time, other advanced features were implemented. The library has many aims, and these include Lightweight, Backwards compatible, Simple, Flexible, Pythonic, Dynamic, Easy, Extensible, and WSGI compliant. PySimpleSOAP supports Python 3.
PySimpleSOAP alternatives
17
LibstatgrabFree
Libstatgrab is a library developed using C to provide cross-platform access to information regarding the system on which it exists. It offers several interfaces for accessing important system statistics. You can view core details like disk I/O, CPU usage, network traffic, memory utilization, process counts, and more. The library is compatible with multiple platforms such as AIX, FreeBSD, Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, NetBSD, and more.
Besides the mentioned features, you will also find a few useful tools in the package. One of these is saidar, which allows you to view the existing system state through a curse-based interface. Another great tool is statgrab, responsible for providing a sysctl-style interface to information collected by libstagrab. This functionality can prove useful for anyone writing scripts or anything else for which it is difficult to initiate C function calls. Statgrab is bundled with a script that you can use to generate an MRTG configuration file for using statgrab.
Libstatgrab alternatives
18
GNOME System MonitorFree
GNOME System Monitor is designed to make it easy for you to monitor system resources and manage existing processes. It offers many benefits to the end-user, such as searching for open files, monitoring memory, network and swap, and memory usage, viewing the mounts and disks for used and available space, and tracking the control processes and process properties. The UI is user-friendly and includes three buttons at the top for Processes, Resources, and File Systems, with the information given below depending on the clicked button. Other options include search and the settings button.
GNOME System Monitor alternatives
19
BashtopFree
Bashtop is an open-source, feature-rich resource monitor that displays statistics about networks and processes, processors, disks, and memory. It is super-fast, easy-to-use, CPU-intensive, and provides multiple benefits such as extensive customization, mouse support, memory consumption graphs, and toggleable mini mode.
You also get access to many amazing features such as the ability to filter processes, a beautiful menu inspired by games, checking in-depth stats for the selected process, an auto-scaling graph for network usage, notifications informing about a new version, and more. It also lets you view current write and read speed for disks and send SIGINT, SIGTERM, SIGKILL to the desired processes, and more.
Bashtop alternatives
20
Prio – Process Priority SaverFree
Prio – Process Priority Saver is a tool that lets you control and changes the priority of applications and interface enhancements for the Windows task Manager. While the Windows Task Manager is a great tool, it’s limited in its ability to indicate the priority of an application. Prio adds priority indicators to the windows task manager. The idea is to help the user understand what applications are running at what priority and help them make better decisions about resource priority.
The tool can also save or restore application priorities to and from a file, so you can quickly launch applications at their default priority or any other that you choose. Simply save a task with an easy-to-remember the name and an optional description, then launch that task at any time to restore the task manager to the state it was in when you saved it. You can also pin tasks to the start menu so that they are easily accessible.
Prio’s functionality can be used to keep the application running in the foreground at all times, always on top or even foreground-foreground priority to give the application priority over normal foreground applications and windows. All in all, Prio – Process Priority Saver is a great tool that you can consider among its alternatives.
Prio – Process Priority Saver alternatives
21
IPtraf-ngFree
IPtraf-ng is a Linux network monitoring program useful for viewing statistics about IP traffic. You can use it to view crucial information like Lan station statistics, Current TCP connections, Interface activity, Packet counts by packet sizes, Flag statuses on TCP packets, TCP/UDP counts by ports, Byte and packet counts by IP address, and more. It is an excellent tool for finding the type of traffic running on your network, along with the service and the machine on which it is being used. It works on a number of interfaces, including loopback, Ethernet, and PLIP. It supports various tunnels such as SIT and GRE-over-IP tunnels.
IPtraf-ng alternatives
22
AtmonitorFree
AtMonitor is a task monitoring tool that shows you what macOS is doing with activity in real-time. The visualizations and real-time data of system resources (CPU, memory, and network) are the main features of this tool. While consuming very little amount of ram, it allows you to monitor your system’s activity even on older computers and still have free RAM for other applications.
The app shows a log of activities, services, and processes that run on the computer and allows users to pause or end them, as well as to save logs. AtMonitor displays items sorted by Process Name, Process ID, User, CPU Time, and I/O Time in a list view, with detailed information including process details, RAM usage, and CPU activity.
Atmonitor alternatives
23
DBCTaskman
DBCTaskman is a tool that offers the same Windows 8 task manager in the Windows 7 which lets you see more of the info about current conditions and resource usage from apps. It is based on code from the Windows 8 KernelBase.dll. It keeps track of your memory and CPU usage by displaying a graphical chart for each process. All other operations are same as of the standard Windows 8b task manager i.e., process tab, performance tab, users, details, services, and startup tab. All in all, DBCTaskman is a great tool that you can consider among its alternatives.
DBCTaskman alternatives