head to head · open source
Grafana vs opencost
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. opencost has 6,802 stars, 916 forks, 306 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 1,041% (77,638 vs 6,802 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; opencost is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, opencost 13%. 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 | opencost | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 6.8K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 916 |
| 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 opencost if
- You want the opencost 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 opencost 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 opencost
OpenCost — your favorite open source cost monitoring tool for Kubernetes and cloud spend OpenCost give teams visibility into current and historical Kubernetes and cloud spend and resource allocation. These models provide cost transparency in Kubernetes environments that support multiple applications, teams, departments, etc. It also provides visibility into the cloud costs across multiple providers. OpenCost was originally developed and open sourced by Kubecost. This project combines a specification as well as a Golang implementation of these detailed requirements. The web UI is available in the…
read the full opencost overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or opencost more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and opencost has 6,802. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and opencost free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and opencost under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and opencost?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and opencost 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 opencost?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose opencost if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.