head to head · open source
Grafana vs jaeger-ui
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jaeger-ui has 1,545 stars, 873 forks, 225 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 4,925% (77,638 vs 1,545 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; jaeger-ui is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, jaeger-ui 57%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (hacktoberfest, 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 | jaeger-ui | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 873 |
| 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 jaeger-ui if
- You want the jaeger-ui feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and jaeger-ui 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 jaeger-ui
[![Build Status][ci img]][ci] [![Coverage Status][cov img]][cov] [![FOSSA Status][fossa img]][fossa] Jaeger UI Visualize distributed tracing with Jaeger. Contributing See CONTRIBUTING for development setup, coding standards, and contribution guidelines. Stuck somewhere or found a bug? See Getting in Touch on how to ask for help. UI Configuration See the configuration guide for details on configuring Google Analytics tracking, menu customizations, and other aspects of UI behavior. License Apache 2.0 License. [ci img]: [ci]: [cov img]: [cov]: [fossa img]: [fossa]:
read the full jaeger-ui overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or jaeger-ui more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and jaeger-ui has 1,545. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and jaeger-ui free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and jaeger-ui under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and jaeger-ui?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and jaeger-ui 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 jaeger-ui?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose jaeger-ui if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.