head to head · open source
Grafana vs django-prometheus
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped today. django-prometheus has 1,666 stars, 265 forks, 101 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 4,509% (76,792 vs 1,666 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; django-prometheus is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, django-prometheus 16%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (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.
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Side by side
| Grafana | django-prometheus | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-07-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 265 |
| 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 django-prometheus if
- You want the django-prometheus feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and django-prometheus 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 django-prometheus
django prometheus Export Django monitoring metrics for Prometheus.io Features This library provides Prometheus metrics for Django related operations: Requests & Responses Database access done via Django ORM Cache access done via Django Cache framework Metrics Reference For a detailed list and explanation of all metrics exported by this library, see documentation/metrics.md. Usage Requirements Django = 4.2 Python 3.9 and above. Installation Install with: Or, if you're using a development version cloned from this repository: This will install prometheus client as a dependency. Quickstart In your settings.py: In you…
read the full django-prometheus overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or django-prometheus more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and django-prometheus has 1,666. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and django-prometheus free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and django-prometheus under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and django-prometheus?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and django-prometheus in Python. 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 django-prometheus?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose django-prometheus if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.