head to head · open source
Grafana vs defmt
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. defmt has 1,228 stars, 132 forks, 117 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 6,153% (76,792 vs 1,228 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; defmt is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, defmt 11%. 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.
← all 13541 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Grafana | defmt | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 132 |
| 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 defmt if
- You want the defmt feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and defmt 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 defmt
defmt is an efficient, deferred formatting logging framework for embedded systems written in Rust, aimed at firmware developers building for resource constrained devices such as microcontrollers.
read the full defmt 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 defmt more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and defmt has 1,228. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and defmt free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and defmt under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and defmt?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and defmt in Rust. 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 defmt?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose defmt if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.