head to head · open source
Grafana vs kmon
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kmon has 2,946 stars, 93 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 2,507% (76,792 vs 2,946 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 | ★ 77K | ★ 2.9K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 93 |
| 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 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
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 kmon
kmon is a Linux kernel manager and activity monitor written in Rust that gives system administrators and developers a terminal user interface for inspecting kernel information and managing loadable kernel modules.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or kmon more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and kmon has 2,946. 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 (76,792 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.