head to head · open source
Grafana vs nezha
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped today. nezha has 10,317 stars, 1,613 forks, 54 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 644% (76,792 vs 10,317 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; nezha is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, nezha 16%. 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 | nezha | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 10K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| 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 nezha if
- You want the nezha 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 nezha 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 nezha
Nezha is a self hosted, lightweight server and website monitoring and O&M tool written in Go, for operators and small teams who want to watch their own machines and sites without sending that data to someone else's dashboard.
read the full nezha overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or nezha more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and nezha has 10,317. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and nezha free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and nezha under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and nezha?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and nezha 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 nezha?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose nezha if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.