head to head · open source
Grafana vs opentelemetry-dotnet
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped today. opentelemetry-dotnet has 3,753 stars, 902 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped today. Grafana leads on adoption by 1,946% (76,792 vs 3,753 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; opentelemetry-dotnet is written in C# under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, opentelemetry-dotnet 24%. opentelemetry-dotnet 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 | opentelemetry-dotnet | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 3.8K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 902 |
| 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 opentelemetry-dotnet if
- You want the opentelemetry-dotnet feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and opentelemetry-dotnet 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 opentelemetry-dotnet
OpenTelemetry .NET The .NET OpenTelemetry implementation. Table of Contents Supported .NET versions Project status Getting started Getting started with Logging Getting started with Metrics Getting started with Tracing Repository structure Troubleshooting Extensibility Releases Contributing References Supported .NET versions Packages shipped from this repository generally support all the officially supported versions of .NET and .NET Framework (an older Windows based .NET implementation), except .NET Framework 3.5 . Any exceptions to this are noted in the individual README.md files. Project status Stable across al…
read the full opentelemetry-dotnet overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or opentelemetry-dotnet more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and opentelemetry-dotnet has 3,753. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and opentelemetry-dotnet free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and opentelemetry-dotnet under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and opentelemetry-dotnet?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and opentelemetry-dotnet in C#. 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 opentelemetry-dotnet?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose opentelemetry-dotnet if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.