head to head · open source
Grafana vs aya
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. aya has 4,886 stars, 484 forks, 201 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 1,489% (77,638 vs 4,886 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; aya is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, aya 10%. 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 | aya | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 4.9K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 484 |
| 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 aya if
- You want the aya feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and aya 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 aya
[![Crates.io][crates badge]][crates url] ![License][license badge] [![Build status][build badge]][build url] [![Book][book badge]][book url] [![Gurubase][gurubase badge]][gurubase url] [crates badge]: [crates url]: [license badge]: [build badge]: [build url]: [book badge]: [book url]: [gurubase badge]: [gurubase url]: API Documentation [![Unreleased Documentation][git docs badge]][git api docs] [![Documentation][api docs badge]][api docs] [git docs badge]: [git api docs]: [api docs badge]: [api docs]: Community [![Discord][discord badge]][chat url] [![Awesome][awesome badge]][awesome aya] Join [the conversation…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or aya more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and aya has 4,886. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and aya free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and aya under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and aya?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and aya in Rust. 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 aya?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose aya if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.