head to head · open source
Grafana vs client_js
Grafana has 77,627 GitHub stars, 14,895 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. client_js has 3,498 stars, 431 forks, 50 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 2,119% (77,627 vs 3,498 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; client_js is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, client_js 12%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (metrics, 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 | client_js | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 3.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 431 |
| 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 client_js if
- You want the client_js feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and client_js 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 client_js
Prometheus client for Node.js A prometheus client for Node.js that supports histogram, summaries, gauges and counters. Installation This package was previously published as prom client . See the CHANGELOG for the breaking changes involved in upgrading. API See example folder for a sample usage. The library does not bundle any web framework. To expose the metrics, respond to Prometheus's scrape requests with the result of await registry.metrics() . Default metrics There are some default metrics recommended by Prometheus itself. To collect these, call collectDefaultMetrics . In addition, some Node.js specific…
read the full client_js overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or client_js more popular?
Grafana has 77,627 GitHub stars and client_js has 3,498. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and client_js free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and client_js under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and client_js?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and client_js in JavaScript. 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 client_js?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,627 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose client_js if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.