head to head · open source
Grafana vs datadog-agent
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. datadog-agent has 3,772 stars, 1,525 forks, 721 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 1,958% (77,638 vs 3,772 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; datadog-agent is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, datadog-agent 40%. datadog-agent was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (go, 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Grafana | datadog-agent | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 3.8K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| 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 datadog-agent if
- You want the datadog-agent feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and datadog-agent 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 datadog-agent
Datadog Agent This repository contains the source code of the Datadog Agent version 7 and version 6. Please refer to the Agent user documentation for information about differences between Agent v5, Agent v6 and Agent v7. Additionally, we provide a list of prepackaged binaries for an easy install process here. Documentation The developer docs site contains information about how to develop the Datadog Agent itself. The source of the content is located under the docs directory and may contain pages that are not yet published. Contributing code You'll find information and help on how to contribute code to this…
read the full datadog-agent overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Monitoring & Observability projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Monitoring & Observability field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or datadog-agent more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and datadog-agent has 3,772. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and datadog-agent free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and datadog-agent under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and datadog-agent?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and datadog-agent in Go. 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 datadog-agent?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose datadog-agent if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.