head to head · open source
Prometheus vs dbx
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars, 10,969 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dbx has 28,664 stars, 2,616 forks, 1,406 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Prometheus leads on adoption by 133% (66,906 vs 28,664 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; dbx is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, dbx 9%. Prometheus was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Prometheus | dbx | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 29K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 2.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Prometheus if
- You weight community size — 67K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick dbx if
- You want the dbx feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and dbx fits your workflow better
About Prometheus
Prometheus Visit prometheus.io for the full documentation, examples and guides. [ ][quay] [ ][hub] Prometheus, a Cloud Native Computing Foundation project, is a systems and service monitoring system. It collects metrics from configured targets at given intervals, evaluates rule expressions, displays the results, and can trigger alerts when specified conditions are observed. The features that distinguish Prometheus from other metrics and monitoring systems are: A multi dimensional data model (time series defined by metric name and set of key/value dimensions) PromQL, a powerful and flexible query language to…
read the full Prometheus overview →
About dbx
90+ databases in 25 MB. Desktop, Docker, CLI, built in AI assistant, and MCP Server. <img src="
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or dbx more popular?
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars and dbx has 28,664. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and dbx free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dbx under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and dbx?
Prometheus is written in Go and dbx in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Prometheus or dbx?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,906 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dbx if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.