head to head · open source
Grafana vs eliot
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars, 14,749 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. eliot has 1,189 stars, 73 forks, 120 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 6,358% (76,791 vs 1,189 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; eliot is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, eliot 6%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (elasticsearch), 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 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Grafana | eliot | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-05-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 73 |
| 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 eliot if
- You want the eliot 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 eliot 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 eliot
Eliot is a Python logging library that records causal chains of actions rather than a flat stream of unrelated factoids, and it is for Python developers and scientific computing teams who need to answer why a code path ran, why an error happened, or where time went.
read the full eliot 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 eliot more popular?
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars and eliot has 1,189. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and eliot free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and eliot under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and eliot?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and eliot 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 eliot?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,791 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose eliot if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.