head to head · open source
Grafana vs Foundatio
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped today. Foundatio has 2,098 stars, 250 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 3,560% (76,792 vs 2,098 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; Foundatio is written in C# under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, Foundatio 12%. 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 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Grafana | Foundatio | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 250 |
| 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 Foundatio if
- You want the Foundatio 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 Foundatio 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 Foundatio
Pluggable foundation blocks for building loosely coupled distributed apps. ✨ Why Choose Foundatio? 🔌 Pluggable implementations Swap Redis, Azure, AWS, or in memory with no code changes 🧪 Developer friendly In memory implementations for fast local development and testing 💉 DI native Built for Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection 🎯 Interface first Code against abstractions, not implementations ⚡ Production ready Battle tested in high scale applications 🔄 Consistent APIs Same patterns across caching, queues, storage, and more 🧱 Core Building Blocks 🚀 Quick Start 📦 Provider Implementations 📚 Learn More �…
read the full Foundatio 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 Foundatio more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and Foundatio has 2,098. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and Foundatio free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Foundatio under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and Foundatio?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and Foundatio 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 Foundatio?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Foundatio if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.