head to head · open source
Grafana vs kmon
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kmon has 2,969 stars, 93 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 2,515% (77,638 vs 2,969 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; kmon is written in Rust under GPL-3.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, kmon 3%. 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 | kmon | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 3.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 93 |
| 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 kmon if
- You want the kmon feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and kmon 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 kmon
Linux Kernel Manager and Activity Monitor 🐧💻 The kernel is the part of the operating system that facilitates interactions between hardware and software components. On most systems, it is loaded on startup after the bootloader and handles I/O requests as well as peripherals like keyboards, monitors, network adapters, and speakers. Typically, the kernel is responsible for memory management , process management , device management , system calls , and security . Applications use the system call mechanism for requesting a service from the operating system and most of the time, this request is passed to the kernel…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or kmon more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and kmon has 2,969. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and kmon free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and kmon under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and kmon?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and kmon 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 kmon?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose kmon if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.