head to head · open source
Grafana vs Checkmk
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars, 14,749 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Checkmk has 2,368 stars, 555 forks, 55 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 3,143% (76,791 vs 2,368 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 23%. 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 | ★ 77K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 555 |
| 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 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
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 Checkmk
Checkmk is a comprehensive IT monitoring system for infrastructure and application monitoring across physical, virtual, containerized, and cloud environments. It is an open source Python project released under the GNU GPL v2, and it lives in the infrastructure monitoring and observability ecosystem. The project provides a central monitoring engine, a web based interface, and support for many official and community maintained plugins.
read the full Checkmk overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or Checkmk more popular?
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars and Checkmk has 2,368. 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 (76,791 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.