head to head · open source
Grafana vs opentelemetry-go
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars, 14,749 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. opentelemetry-go has 6,553 stars, 1,473 forks, 166 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 1,072% (76,791 vs 6,553 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; opentelemetry-go is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, opentelemetry-go 22%. 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-go | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 6.6K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| 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-go if
- You want the opentelemetry-go 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 opentelemetry-go 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-go
OpenTelemetry Go is the Go implementation of OpenTelemetry, the vendor neutral observability framework. It provides a set of APIs that let Go programs directly measure the performance and behavior of their own software, then send the resulting telemetry to observability platforms. The project lives in the Go ecosystem and is distributed as the module go.opentelemetry.io/otel , published on pkg.go.dev and licensed under Apache 2.0. It is a long running, actively maintained repository, roughly seven years old, with a large contributor base and a steady release cadence.
read the full opentelemetry-go overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or opentelemetry-go more popular?
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars and opentelemetry-go has 6,553. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and opentelemetry-go free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and opentelemetry-go under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and opentelemetry-go?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and opentelemetry-go 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 opentelemetry-go?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,791 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose opentelemetry-go if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.