head to head · open source
Grafana vs graphite-web
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars, 14,749 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. graphite-web has 6,118 stars, 1,255 forks, 25 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 1,155% (76,791 vs 6,118 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; graphite-web is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, graphite-web 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 (metrics), 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 | graphite-web | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 6.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| 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 graphite-web if
- You want the graphite-web feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and graphite-web 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 graphite-web
Graphite Web is the Django based web application that renders graphs and dashboards for the Graphite monitoring stack, aimed at infrastructure and operations teams who collect time series metrics and need to visualise them.
read the full graphite-web overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or graphite-web more popular?
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars and graphite-web has 6,118. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and graphite-web free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and graphite-web under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and graphite-web?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and graphite-web in JavaScript. 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 graphite-web?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,791 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose graphite-web if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.