head to head · open source
Grafana vs Nagios
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Nagios has 2,065 stars, 488 forks, 206 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 3,660% (77,638 vs 2,065 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; Nagios is written in C under GPL-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, Nagios 24%. 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 | Nagios | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 488 |
| 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 Nagios if
- You want the Nagios feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and Nagios 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 Nagios
Nagios 4.x ========== Nagios is a host/service/network monitoring program written in C and released under the GNU General Public License, version 2. CGI programs are included to allow you to view the current status, history, etc via a web interface if you so desire. Visit the Nagios homepage at for documentation, new releases, bug reports, information on discussion forums, and more. Features Monitoring of network services (via SMTP, POP3, HTTP, PING, etc). Monitoring of host resources (processor load, disk usage, etc.). A plugin interface to allow for user developed service monitoring methods. Ability to define…
read the full Nagios overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or Nagios more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and Nagios has 2,065. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and Nagios free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Nagios under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and Nagios?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and Nagios 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 Nagios?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Nagios if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.