head to head · open source
Grafana vs airframe
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. airframe has 666 stars, 67 forks, 105 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 11,557% (77,638 vs 666 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; airframe is written in Scala under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, airframe 10%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (metrics), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Grafana | airframe | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 666 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Scala |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 67 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Grafana if
- You weight community size — 78K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick airframe if
- You want the airframe feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Scala
- You evaluated both and airframe fits your workflow better
About Grafana
The open source platform for monitoring and observability Grafana allows you to query, visualize, alert on and understand your metrics no matter where they are stored. Create, explore, and share dashboards with your team and foster a data driven culture: Visualizations: Fast and flexible client side graphs with a multitude of options. Panel plugins offer many different ways to visualize metrics and logs. Dynamic Dashboards: Create dynamic & reusable dashboards with template variables that appear as dropdowns at the top of the dashboard. Explore Metrics: Explore your data through ad hoc queries and dynamic…
read the full Grafana overview →
About airframe
[![Gitter Chat][gitter badge]][gitter link] [![CI Status][gha badge]][gha link] [![scala index][sindex badge]][sindex link] [![maven central][central badge]][central link] [circleci badge]: [circleci link]: [gha badge]: [gha link]: [gitter badge]: [gitter link]: [coverall badge]: [coverall link]: [sindex badge]: [sindex link]: [central badge]: [central link]: Airframe is essential building blocks for developing applications in Scala, including logging, object serialization using JSON or MessagePack, dependency injection, http server/client with RPC support, functional testing with AirSpec, etc. Resources…
read the full airframe overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Monitoring & Observability projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Monitoring & Observability field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or airframe more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and airframe has 666. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and airframe free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and airframe under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and airframe?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and airframe in Scala. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Grafana or airframe?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose airframe if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.