head to head · open source
Grafana vs debug
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars, 14,749 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. debug has 11,454 stars, 991 forks, 96 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 570% (76,791 vs 11,454 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; debug is written in JavaScript under MIT. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, debug 9%. Grafana 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 | debug | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 11K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-04-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 991 |
| 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 debug if
- You want the debug feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and debug 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 debug
debug is a tiny, MIT licensed JavaScript debugging utility modelled after Node.js core's debugging technique, and it is aimed at JavaScript developers and library authors who want to turn debug output on and off by namespace instead of editing or deleting logging statements.
read the full debug overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or debug more popular?
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars and debug has 11,454. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and debug free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and debug under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and debug?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and debug 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 debug?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,791 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose debug if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.