head to head · open source
Grafana vs loongcollector
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. loongcollector has 2,213 stars, 456 forks, 166 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 3,408% (77,638 vs 2,213 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 21%. 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 | ★ 78K | ★ 2.2K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 456 |
| 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 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
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 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…
read the full loongcollector overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or loongcollector more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and loongcollector has 2,213. 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 (77,638 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.