head to head · open source
Grafana vs Gatus
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars, 14,749 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Gatus has 12,095 stars, 828 forks, 382 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 535% (76,791 vs 12,095 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; Gatus is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, Gatus 7%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (alerting, dashboard, go, 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 | Gatus | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 12K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 828 |
| 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 Gatus if
- You want the Gatus feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Gatus 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 Gatus
Gatus is an open source health dashboard and status page for monitoring services in real time. It is written in Go, licensed under Apache 2.0, and appears in the Infrastructure & Operations / Monitoring & Observability category. The project presents a developer oriented interface for checking whether services are reachable and behaving as expected.
read the full Gatus overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or Gatus more popular?
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars and Gatus has 12,095. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and Gatus free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Gatus under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and Gatus?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and Gatus in Go. 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 Gatus?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,791 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Gatus if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.