head to head · open source
Grafana vs ngxtop
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ngxtop has 6,521 stars, 472 forks, 62 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 1,091% (77,638 vs 6,521 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; ngxtop is written in Python under MIT. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, ngxtop 7%. 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 | ngxtop | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-03-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 472 |
| 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 ngxtop if
- You want the ngxtop feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and ngxtop 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 ngxtop
================================================================ ngxtop real time metrics for nginx server (and others) ================================================================ ngxtop parses your nginx access log and outputs useful, top like, metrics of your nginx server. So you can tell what is happening with your server in real time. ngxtop is designed to run in a short period time just like the top command for troubleshooting and monitoring your Nginx server at the moment. If you need a long running monitoring process or storing your webserver stats in external monitoring / graphing system, you can…
read the full ngxtop overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or ngxtop more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and ngxtop has 6,521. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and ngxtop free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and ngxtop under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and ngxtop?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and ngxtop in Python. 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 ngxtop?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose ngxtop if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.