head to head · open source
Grafana vs dd-trace-dotnet
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dd-trace-dotnet has 573 stars, 176 forks, 335 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 13,449% (77,638 vs 573 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; dd-trace-dotnet is written in C# under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, dd-trace-dotnet 31%. dd-trace-dotnet was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | dd-trace-dotnet | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 573 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | C# |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 176 |
| 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 dd-trace-dotnet if
- You want the dd-trace-dotnet feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and dd-trace-dotnet 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 dd-trace-dotnet
Datadog APM .NET Client Libraries This repository contains the sources for the client side components of the Datadog product suite for Application Telemetry Collection and Application Performance Monitoring for .NET Applications. Datadog .NET Tracer : A set of .NET libraries that let you trace any piece of your .NET code. It automatically instruments supported libraries out of the box and also supports custom instrumentation to instrument your own code. This library powers Distributed Tracing, Application Security Management, Continuous Integration Visibility, Dynamic Instrumentation and more. Datadog .NET…
read the full dd-trace-dotnet overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or dd-trace-dotnet more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and dd-trace-dotnet has 573. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and dd-trace-dotnet free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and dd-trace-dotnet under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and dd-trace-dotnet?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and dd-trace-dotnet in C#. 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 dd-trace-dotnet?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose dd-trace-dotnet if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.