head to head · open source
Grafana vs grimoirelab
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. grimoirelab has 639 stars, 234 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 12,050% (77,638 vs 639 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; grimoirelab is written in Shell under GPL-3.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, grimoirelab 37%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (data-visualization, 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 | grimoirelab | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 639 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Shell |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 234 |
| 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 grimoirelab if
- You want the grimoirelab feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You evaluated both and grimoirelab 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 grimoirelab
GrimoireLab GrimoireLab is a CHAOSS toolset for software development analytics. It includes a coordinated set of tools to retrieve data from systems used to support software development (repositories), store it in databases, enrich it by computing relevant metrics, and make it easy to run analytics and visualizations on it. You can learn more about GrimoireLab in the GrimoireLab tutorial, or visit the GrimoireLab website. Metrics available in GrimoireLab are, in part, developed in the CHAOSS project. For more information regarding CHAOSS metrics, see the latest release at: Getting started To ease the newcomer…
read the full grimoirelab overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or grimoirelab more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and grimoirelab has 639. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and grimoirelab free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and grimoirelab under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and grimoirelab?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and grimoirelab in Shell. 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 grimoirelab?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose grimoirelab if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.