head to head · open source
Grafana vs kdash
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kdash has 2,537 stars, 95 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 2,927% (76,792 vs 2,537 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; kdash is written in Rust under MIT. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, kdash 4%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (dashboard, 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 | kdash | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 2.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 95 |
| 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 kdash if
- You want the kdash feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and kdash 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 kdash
KDash is a simple and fast terminal dashboard for Kubernetes, written in Rust and released under the MIT licence, built for developers, SREs and platform engineers who inspect and operate clusters from a shell rather than a browser.
read the full kdash overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or kdash more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and kdash has 2,537. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and kdash free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and kdash under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and kdash?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and kdash in Rust. 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 kdash?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose kdash if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.