head to head · open source
Grafana vs Checkmate
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Checkmate has 11,020 stars, 1,234 forks, 114 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 605% (77,638 vs 11,020 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; Checkmate is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, Checkmate 11%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (hacktoberfest), 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 | Checkmate | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 11K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 Checkmate if
- You want the Checkmate feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Checkmate 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 Checkmate
🇺🇸 English 🇸🇦 العربية 🇪🇸 Català 🇨🇿 Čeština 🇩🇪 Deutsch 🇪🇸 Español 🇫🇮 Suomi 🇫🇷 Français 🇮🇹 Italiano 🇯🇵 日本語 🇧🇷 Português (Brasil) 🇷🇺 Русский 🇹🇭 ไทย 🇹🇷 Türkçe 🇺🇦 Українська 🇻🇳 Tiếng Việt 🇨🇳 简体中文 🇹🇼 繁體中文 Checkmate An open source uptime and infrastructure monitoring application This repository contains both the frontend and the backend of Checkmate, an open source, self hosted monitoring tool for tracking server hardware, uptime, response times, and incidents in real time with beautiful visualizations. Checkmate regularly checks whether a server/website is accessible and performs…
read the full Checkmate overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or Checkmate more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and Checkmate has 11,020. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and Checkmate free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Checkmate under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and Checkmate?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and Checkmate in TypeScript. 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 Checkmate?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Checkmate if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.