head to head · open source
Grafana vs dashdot
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dashdot has 3,546 stars, 135 forks, 61 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 2,066% (76,792 vs 3,546 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; dashdot is written in TypeScript under MIT. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, dashdot 4%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (dashboard, 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 | dashdot | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 3.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 135 |
| 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 dashdot if
- You want the dashdot feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and dashdot 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 dashdot
dashdot (also written dash.) is an MIT licensed, TypeScript based server dashboard that runs in Docker and is built for smaller VPS instances and private servers, aimed at self hosters and small operators who want a modern, glassmorphism styled view of a single machine.
read the full dashdot overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or dashdot more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and dashdot has 3,546. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and dashdot free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and dashdot under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and dashdot?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and dashdot 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 dashdot?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose dashdot if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.