head to head · open source
Grafana vs Highlight
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Highlight has 9,385 stars, 704 forks, 553 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 727% (77,638 vs 9,385 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; Highlight is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, Highlight 8%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (metrics, 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 | Highlight | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 9.4K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 704 |
| 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 Highlight if
- You want the Highlight feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Highlight 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 Highlight
Docs Community (Support & Feedback) Feature request Bug report highlight.io: The open source, fullstack monitoring platform. highlight.io is a monitoring tool for the next generation of developers (like you!). Unlike the age old, outdated tools out there, we aim to build a cohesive, modern and fully featured monitoring solution, something we wished WE had. And it's all open source :) At a high level, highlight.io's feature set is: Session Replay Error Monitoring Logging We strive to make highlight.io as easy to install as a few lines of code in any environment. Read more about our features, values and mission…
read the full Highlight overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or Highlight more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and Highlight has 9,385. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and Highlight free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0, and Highlight has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Grafana and Highlight?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and Highlight in TypeScript. 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 Highlight?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Highlight if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.