head to head · open source
Grafana vs kube-state-metrics
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars, 14,749 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kube-state-metrics has 6,204 stars, 2,194 forks, 109 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 1,138% (76,791 vs 6,204 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; kube-state-metrics is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, kube-state-metrics 35%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (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 | kube-state-metrics | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 6.2K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| 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 kube-state-metrics if
- You want the kube-state-metrics feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and kube-state-metrics 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 kube-state-metrics
kube state metrics is an Apache 2.0 add on agent for Kubernetes that listens to the Kubernetes API server and exposes metrics about the state of cluster objects, built for platform teams and operators who run Prometheus based monitoring.
read the full kube-state-metrics overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or kube-state-metrics more popular?
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars and kube-state-metrics has 6,204. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and kube-state-metrics free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and kube-state-metrics under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and kube-state-metrics?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and kube-state-metrics in Go. 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 kube-state-metrics?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,791 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose kube-state-metrics if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.