head to head · open source
effect vs thanos
effect has 16,097 GitHub stars, 747 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. thanos has 14,207 stars, 2,369 forks, 908 open issues and last shipped yesterday. effect leads on adoption by 13% (16,097 vs 14,207 stars). effect is written in TypeScript under MIT; thanos is written in Go under Apache-2.0. effect has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, thanos 17%. effect was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (observability), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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
| effect | thanos | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 14K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 747 | ⑂ 2.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick effect if
- You weight community size — 16K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick thanos if
- You want the thanos feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and thanos fits your workflow better
About effect
Effect is a TypeScript library for building robust, maintainable, type safe, and production grade applications. It lives in the TypeScript and JavaScript ecosystem, distributed as the core effect package alongside a monorepo of integration packages that extend it. The project is MIT licensed, has been developed for roughly seven years, and currently ships Effect V4 as a release candidate, with the main branch holding v4 development and the v3 branch retaining the previous line.
read the full effect overview →
About thanos
Thanos is a CNCF Incubating, Apache 2.0 licensed collection of Go components that composes a highly available metric system with unlimited storage capacity on top of an existing Prometheus deployment.
read the full thanos overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is effect or thanos more popular?
effect has 16,097 GitHub stars and thanos has 14,207. effect has the larger community by that measure.
Are effect and thanos free?
Both are open source. effect is licensed under MIT and thanos under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between effect and thanos?
effect is written in TypeScript and thanos in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, effect or thanos?
Choose effect if you want the larger community (16,097 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose thanos if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.