head to head · open source
Grafana vs alerta
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. alerta has 2,533 stars, 377 forks, 34 open issues and last shipped 17 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 2,965% (77,638 vs 2,533 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; alerta is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, alerta 15%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (monitoring), 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
| Grafana | alerta | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 2.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 377 |
| 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 alerta if
- You want the alerta feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and alerta 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 alerta
Alerta Release 9.1 ================== The Alerta monitoring tool was developed with the following aims in mind: distributed and de coupled so that it is SCALABLE minimal CONFIGURATION that easily accepts alerts from any source quick at a glance VISUALISATION with drill down to detail Requirements Release 9 only supports Python 3.9 or higher. The only mandatory dependency is MongoDB or PostgreSQL. Everything else is optional. Postgres version 13 or better MongoDB version 6.0 or better Installation To install MongoDB on Debian/Ubuntu run: $ sudo apt get install y mongodb org $ mongod To install MongoDB on…
read the full alerta overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or alerta more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and alerta has 2,533. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and alerta free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and alerta under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and alerta?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and alerta in Python. 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 alerta?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose alerta if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.