head to head · open source
Grafana vs Apache SkyWalking
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Apache SkyWalking has 24,984 stars, 6,630 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 211% (77,638 vs 24,984 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; Apache SkyWalking is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, Apache SkyWalking 27%. 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.
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Side by side
| Grafana | Apache SkyWalking | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 25K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 6.6K |
| 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 Apache SkyWalking if
- You want the Apache SkyWalking feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and Apache SkyWalking 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 Apache SkyWalking
Apache SkyWalking ========== SkyWalking : an APM (Application Performance Monitoring) system, especially designed for microservices, cloud native and container based architectures. Abstract SkyWalking is an open source APM system that provides monitoring, tracing and diagnosing capabilities for distributed systems in Cloud Native architectures. Distributed Tracing End to end distributed tracing. Service topology analysis, service centric observability and APIs dashboards. Agents for your stack Java, .Net Core, PHP, NodeJS, Golang, LUA, Rust, C++, Client JavaScript and Python agents with active development and…
read the full Apache SkyWalking overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or Apache SkyWalking more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and Apache SkyWalking has 24,984. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and Apache SkyWalking free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Apache SkyWalking under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and Apache SkyWalking?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and Apache SkyWalking in Java. 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 Apache SkyWalking?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Apache SkyWalking if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.