head to head · open source
Grafana vs apm-agent-dotnet
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. apm-agent-dotnet has 594 stars, 219 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 12,970% (77,638 vs 594 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; apm-agent-dotnet is written in C# under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, apm-agent-dotnet 37%. Grafana 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
| Grafana | apm-agent-dotnet | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 594 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | C# |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 219 |
| 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 apm-agent-dotnet if
- You want the apm-agent-dotnet feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and apm-agent-dotnet 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 apm-agent-dotnet
apm agent dotnet Please fill out this survey to help us prioritize framework support: Installation Official NuGet packages can be referenced from NuGet.org. Documentation Docs are located here. That page is generated from the content of the docs folder. Getting Help If you have any feedback feel free to open an issue. For any other assistance, please open or add to a topic on the APM discuss forum. If you need help or hit an issue, please start by opening a topic on our discuss forums. Please note that we reserve GitHub tickets for confirmed bugs and enhancement requests. Contributing See the contributing…
read the full apm-agent-dotnet overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or apm-agent-dotnet more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and apm-agent-dotnet has 594. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and apm-agent-dotnet free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and apm-agent-dotnet under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and apm-agent-dotnet?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and apm-agent-dotnet in C#. 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 apm-agent-dotnet?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose apm-agent-dotnet if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.