head to head · open source
Grafana vs Exceptionless
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Exceptionless has 2,456 stars, 507 forks, 66 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 3,061% (77,638 vs 2,456 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; Exceptionless is written in C# under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, Exceptionless 21%. 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.
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Side by side
| Grafana | Exceptionless | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 2.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | C# |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 507 |
| 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 Exceptionless if
- You want the Exceptionless 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 Exceptionless 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 Exceptionless
The definition of the word exceptionless is: to be without exception. Exceptionless provides real time error reporting for your JavaScript, Node, .NET Core, ASP.NET, Web API, WebForms, WPF, Console, and MVC apps. It organizes the gathered information into simple actionable data that will help your app become exceptionless! ⭐️ We appreciate your star, it helps! Using Exceptionless Refer to the Exceptionless documentation. Hosting Options We provide very reasonably priced hosting at Exceptionless. By using our hosted service, you are supporting the project and helping it get better! We also provide set up and…
read the full Exceptionless overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or Exceptionless more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and Exceptionless has 2,456. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and Exceptionless free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Exceptionless under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and Exceptionless?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and Exceptionless 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 Exceptionless?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Exceptionless if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.