head to head · open source
Grafana vs loongcollector
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped today. loongcollector has 2,196 stars, 450 forks, 166 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 3,397% (76,792 vs 2,196 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; loongcollector is written in C++ under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, loongcollector 20%. 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.
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Side by side
| Grafana | loongcollector | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 2.2K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 450 |
| 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 loongcollector if
- You want the loongcollector feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and loongcollector 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 loongcollector
LoongCollector High Performance Observability Data Collector Fast, Lightweight, and Battle Tested Observability Agent Quick Start • Documentation • Performance Benchmarks • Contributing Why LoongCollector? LoongCollector is a high performance, lightweight observability data collector designed for modern cloud native environments. Born from Alibaba's 15 year journey handling exponential traffic growth and powering tens of millions of deployments, LoongCollector delivers 10x higher throughput with 80% lower resource usage compared to open source alternatives. LoongCollector is a key component of LoongSuite(Alibaba'…
read the full loongcollector overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or loongcollector more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and loongcollector has 2,196. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and loongcollector free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and loongcollector under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and loongcollector?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and loongcollector in C++. 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 loongcollector?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose loongcollector if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.