head to head · open source
Grafana vs Checkmk
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Checkmk has 2,633 stars, 580 forks, 55 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 2,849% (77,638 vs 2,633 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; Checkmk is written in Python under GPL-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, Checkmk 22%. 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 | Checkmk | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 2.6K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 580 |
| 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 Checkmk if
- You want the Checkmk feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and Checkmk 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 Checkmk
Checkmk Your complete IT monitoring solution Checkmk is a comprehensive IT monitoring system designed for scalability, flexibility, and low resource consumption. It supports infrastructure and application monitoring across physical, virtual, containerized, and cloud environments. Checkmk is available in several editions, each suited to different operational needs. Please visit our website for more details, documentation, new releases, discussion forums, and more. Checkmk Community Checkmk Community is completely free and open source (licensed under the GNU GPL v2). It includes the core Checkmk monitoring engine…
read the full Checkmk overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or Checkmk more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and Checkmk has 2,633. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and Checkmk free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Checkmk under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and Checkmk?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and Checkmk in Python. 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 Checkmk?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Checkmk if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.