head to head · open source
Grafana vs btrace
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars, 14,749 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. btrace has 5,994 stars, 956 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 1,181% (76,791 vs 5,994 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 | ★ 77K | ★ 6.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 956 |
| 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 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
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 btrace
BTrace is an open source dynamic tracing and diagnostics tool for Java applications, distributed under the Apache 2.0 license and maintained in the Java and JVM ecosystem. It works by attaching to a running Java Virtual Machine and dynamically instrumenting bytecode at runtime, injecting tracing code into classes that are already loaded. The project sits in the Infrastructure & Operations / Monitoring & Observability category and carries the topics tracing, observability, diagnostics, profiling, bytecode instrumentation, runtime instrumentation, java agent and dtrace.
read the full btrace overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or btrace more popular?
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars and btrace has 5,994. 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 (76,791 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.