head to head · open source
Grafana vs gf
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars, 14,749 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gf has 13,272 stars, 1,719 forks, 148 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 479% (76,791 vs 13,272 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; gf is written in Go under MIT. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, gf 13%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (go), 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 | gf | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 13K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 1.7K |
| 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 gf if
- You want the gf feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and gf 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 gf
GoFrame is an MIT licensed, production ready application framework for the Go programming language that provides a full stack toolkit — HTTP server, ORM, logging, tracing, and command line scaffolding — in a single dependency, aimed at Go teams that want one coherent framework instead of assembling many separate libraries.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or gf more popular?
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars and gf has 13,272. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and gf free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and gf under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and gf?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and gf 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 gf?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,791 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose gf if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.