head to head · open source
Grafana vs cstate
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars, 14,749 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cstate has 2,894 stars, 249 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped 22 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 2,553% (76,791 vs 2,894 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; cstate is written in HTML under MIT. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, cstate 9%. 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 | cstate | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 2.9K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 249 |
| 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 cstate if
- You want the cstate feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and cstate 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 cstate
cState is an open source static status page project in the infrastructure and operations monitoring and observability ecosystem. It uses Hugo and Go to generate a serverless status site, so the published page is made of static files rather than a continuously running status application.
read the full cstate overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or cstate more popular?
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars and cstate has 2,894. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and cstate free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and cstate under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and cstate?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and cstate in HTML. 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 cstate?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,791 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose cstate if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.