head to head · open source
Grafana vs OpenObserve
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars, 14,749 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenObserve has 21,993 stars, 1,091 forks, 598 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 249% (76,791 vs 21,993 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; OpenObserve is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, OpenObserve 5%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (analytics, elasticsearch, grafana, 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 | OpenObserve | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 22K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 OpenObserve if
- You want the OpenObserve feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and OpenObserve 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 OpenObserve
OpenObserve is an open source observability platform for logs, metrics, traces, analytics, Real User Monitoring, session replay, pipelines, SLO, and LLM observability. It lives in the cloud native infrastructure ecosystem and is described as an alternative to Datadog, Splunk, and Elasticsearch. The project is built in Rust, ships as a single binary, and uses Parquet columnar storage with an S3 native design.
read the full OpenObserve overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or OpenObserve more popular?
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars and OpenObserve has 21,993. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and OpenObserve free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and OpenObserve under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and OpenObserve?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and OpenObserve in TypeScript. 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 OpenObserve?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,791 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose OpenObserve if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.