head to head · open source
Grafana vs Icinga
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars, 14,749 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Icinga has 2,237 stars, 616 forks, 496 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 3,333% (76,791 vs 2,237 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; Icinga is written in C++ under GPL-3.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, Icinga 28%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (influxdb, 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 | Icinga | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 2.2K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 616 |
| 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 Icinga if
- You want the Icinga feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and Icinga 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 Icinga
Icinga is an open source monitoring system for complex IT infrastructure. It checks the availability of network resources, notifies users of outages, and generates performance data for reporting. The project sits in the Infrastructure & Operations / Monitoring & Observability ecosystem, and Icinga 2 is the monitoring server component of the broader Icinga stack.
read the full Icinga overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or Icinga more popular?
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars and Icinga has 2,237. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and Icinga free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Icinga under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and Icinga?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and Icinga in C++. 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 Icinga?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,791 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Icinga if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.