head to head · open source
Grafana vs gtop
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped today. gtop has 9,931 stars, 337 forks, 40 open issues and last shipped 11 months ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 673% (76,792 vs 9,931 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; gtop is written in JavaScript under MIT. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, gtop 3%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | gtop | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 9.9K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2025-11-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 337 |
| 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 gtop if
- You want the gtop feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and gtop 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 gtop
gtop is a system monitoring dashboard for the terminal — a Node.js command line tool that renders a live, interactive view of a machine's process table and resource metrics in a text user interface, aimed at developers, system administrators and anyone who wants top style visibility on a Linux, macOS or Windows host without leaving the shell.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or gtop more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and gtop has 9,931. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and gtop free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and gtop under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and gtop?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and gtop 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 gtop?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose gtop if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.