head to head · open source
Grafana vs opentelemetry-dotnet
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. opentelemetry-dotnet has 3,767 stars, 913 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 1,961% (77,638 vs 3,767 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%. 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 | opentelemetry-dotnet | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 3.8K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | C# |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 913 |
| 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 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
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 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…
read the full opentelemetry-dotnet overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or opentelemetry-dotnet more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and opentelemetry-dotnet has 3,767. 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 (77,638 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.