head to head · open source
Grafana vs apm-agent-nodejs
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. apm-agent-nodejs has 595 stars, 244 forks, 361 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 12,948% (77,638 vs 595 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; apm-agent-nodejs is written in JavaScript under BSD-2-Clause. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, apm-agent-nodejs 41%. 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-nodejs | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 595 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 244 |
| 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-nodejs if
- You want the apm-agent-nodejs feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and apm-agent-nodejs 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-nodejs
Elastic APM Node.js Agent This is the official Node.js application performance monitoring (APM) agent for the Elastic Observability solution. It is a Node.js package that runs with your Node.js application to automatically capture errors, tracing data, and performance metrics. APM data is sent to your Elastic Observability deployment hosted in Elastic's cloud or in your own on premises deployment where you can monitor your application, create alerts, and quick identify root causes of service issues. If you have any feedback or questions, please post them on the Discuss forum. Installation Getting started First…
read the full apm-agent-nodejs overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or apm-agent-nodejs more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and apm-agent-nodejs has 595. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and apm-agent-nodejs free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and apm-agent-nodejs under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and apm-agent-nodejs?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and apm-agent-nodejs in JavaScript. 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-nodejs?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose apm-agent-nodejs if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.