head to head · open source
Grafana vs MangoHud
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped today. MangoHud has 9,041 stars, 428 forks, 336 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 749% (76,792 vs 9,041 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; MangoHud is written in C under MIT. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, MangoHud 5%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | MangoHud | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 9.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 428 |
| 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 MangoHud if
- You want the MangoHud feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and MangoHud 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 MangoHud
MangoHud is an MIT licensed Vulkan and OpenGL overlay written in C that draws FPS, frametimes, temperatures and CPU/GPU load on top of Linux applications, built for Linux gamers, benchmarkers and anyone profiling a GPU workload.
read the full MangoHud overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or MangoHud more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and MangoHud has 9,041. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and MangoHud free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and MangoHud under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and MangoHud?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and MangoHud 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 MangoHud?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose MangoHud if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.