head to head · open source
Grafana vs btrace
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. btrace has 5,997 stars, 953 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 1,195% (77,638 vs 5,997 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; btrace is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, btrace 16%. 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 | btrace | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 6.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 953 |
| 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 btrace if
- You want the btrace 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 btrace 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 btrace
BTrace Safe, dynamic tracing for Java applications BTrace dynamically instruments running Java applications to inject tracing code at runtime. No restarts. No recompilation. Production safe. Quick links: Quick Reference · Step by Step Tutorial Why BTrace? Zero downtime Attach to running JVMs without restart Production safe Verified scripts can't crash your application Flexible probes Method entry/exit, timings, field access, allocations Low overhead Bytecode injection with minimal performance impact Supported Java Versions BTrace 3.0 runs on Java 8–25+. Running BTrace against a JVM older than Java 17 is…
read the full btrace overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or btrace more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and btrace has 5,997. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and btrace free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and btrace under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and btrace?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and btrace 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 btrace?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose btrace if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.