head to head · open source
Grafana vs kubeshark
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kubeshark has 12,126 stars, 558 forks, 149 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 540% (77,638 vs 12,126 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; kubeshark is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, kubeshark 5%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Grafana | kubeshark | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 12K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 558 |
| 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 kubeshark if
- You want the kubeshark 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 kubeshark 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 kubeshark
Network Observability for SREs & AI Agents Live Demo · Docs Kubeshark indexes cluster wide network traffic at the kernel level using eBPF — delivering instant answers to any query using network, API, and Kubernetes semantics. What you can do: Download Retrospective PCAPs — cluster wide packet captures filtered by nodes, time, workloads, and IPs. Store PCAPs for long term retention and later investigation. Visualize Network Data — explore traffic matching queries with API, Kubernetes, or network semantics through a real time dashboard. See Encrypted Traffic in Plain Text — automatically decrypt TLS/mTLS traffic…
read the full kubeshark overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Monitoring & Observability projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Monitoring & Observability field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or kubeshark more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and kubeshark has 12,126. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and kubeshark free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and kubeshark under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and kubeshark?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and kubeshark 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 kubeshark?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose kubeshark if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.