head to head · open source
Grafana vs bottom
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars, 14,749 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. bottom has 14,032 stars, 385 forks, 103 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 447% (76,791 vs 14,032 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; bottom is written in Rust under MIT. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, bottom 3%. 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 | bottom | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 14K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 385 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Grafana if
- You weight community size — 77K 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 bottom if
- You want the bottom feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and bottom fits your workflow better
About Grafana
Grafana is an open source observability platform for visualizing metrics, logs, and traces across diverse data sources. It runs in the infrastructure and operations ecosystem, designed for teams needing unified visibility into system behavior without vendor lock in. Built with TypeScript and Go, it provides a composable architecture that integrates with existing toolchains.
read the full Grafana overview →
About bottom
bottom is a customizable cross platform graphical process and system monitor that runs inside the terminal, written in Rust and aimed at developers, system administrators, and anyone who wants an interactive view of CPU, memory, network, disk, and process activity without leaving the shell.
read the full bottom overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or bottom more popular?
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars and bottom has 14,032. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and bottom free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and bottom under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and bottom?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and bottom 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 bottom?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,791 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose bottom if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.