head to head · open source
Grafana vs Cachet
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Cachet has 15,263 stars, 1,631 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 409% (77,638 vs 15,263 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; Cachet is written in PHP under a custom or non-standard licence. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, Cachet 11%. 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 | Cachet | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 15K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | TypeScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| 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 Cachet if
- You want the Cachet feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and Cachet 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 Cachet
Cachet, the open source self hosted status page system. Cachet 3.x Announcement For more information on the Cachet rebuild and our plans for 3.x, you can read the announcement here. Requirements PHP 8.3 or later Composer A supported database: MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite Installation, Upgrades and Documentation You can find documentation at Here are some useful quick links: Installing Cachet Demo To test out the v3 demo, you can log in to the Cachet dashboard with the following credentials: Email: test@test.com Password: test123 Note The demo automatically resets every 30 minutes. Sponsors Security…
read the full Cachet overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or Cachet more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and Cachet has 15,263. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and Cachet free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0, and Cachet has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Grafana and Cachet?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and Cachet in PHP. 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 Cachet?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Cachet if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.