head to head · open source
Grafana vs node_exporter
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars, 14,749 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. node_exporter has 13,785 stars, 2,710 forks, 314 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 457% (76,791 vs 13,785 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; node_exporter is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, node_exporter 20%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (metrics), 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 | node_exporter | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 14K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 2.7K |
| 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 node_exporter if
- You want the node_exporter 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 node_exporter 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 node_exporter
Node exporter is a Prometheus exporter for hardware and OS metrics exposed by \ NIX kernels. It is written in Go and ships with pluggable metric collectors, so the set of measurements it gathers can be tuned per host rather than fixed at build time. The project lives in the Prometheus ecosystem, is published under the Apache 2.0 license, and has been developed for roughly thirteen years, with the repository showing 13,782 stars and 2,708 forks at the time of writing.
read the full node_exporter overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or node_exporter more popular?
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars and node_exporter has 13,785. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and node_exporter free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and node_exporter under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and node_exporter?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and node_exporter 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 node_exporter?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,791 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose node_exporter if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.