head to head · open source
Prometheus vs etcd
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars, 10,969 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. etcd has 52,441 stars, 10,552 forks, 351 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Prometheus leads on adoption by 28% (66,906 vs 52,441 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; etcd is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, etcd 20%. 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 | etcd | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 52K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 11K |
| 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 etcd if
- You want the etcd 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 etcd 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 etcd
etcd Note : The main branch may be in an unstable or even broken state during development. For stable versions, see [releases][github release]. etcd is a distributed reliable key value store for the most critical data of a distributed system, with a focus on being: Simple : well defined, user facing API (gRPC) Secure : automatic TLS with optional client cert authentication Fast : benchmarked 10,000 writes/sec Reliable : properly distributed using Raft etcd is written in Go and uses the [Raft][] consensus algorithm to manage a highly available replicated log. etcd is used in production by many companies, and the…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or etcd more popular?
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars and etcd has 52,441. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and etcd free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and etcd under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and etcd?
Prometheus is written in Go and etcd 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, Prometheus or etcd?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,906 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose etcd if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.