head to head · open source
Grafana vs opentelemetry-php
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. opentelemetry-php has 919 stars, 233 forks, 97 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 8,348% (77,638 vs 919 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; opentelemetry-php is written in PHP under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, opentelemetry-php 25%. 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-php | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 919 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 233 |
| 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-php if
- You want the opentelemetry-php feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and opentelemetry-php 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-php
OpenTelemetry for PHP This is the monorepo for the main components of OpenTelemetry for PHP. Documentation Please read the official documentation: API Documentation is available here: AI Assistance If you're planning on using AI to contribute to the OpenTelemetry PHP repositories, please follow the OpenTelemetry GenAI Policies. Packages and versions Releases for both this repository and contrib are based on read only git subtree splits from our monorepo. You should refer to packagist.org for all packages, their versions and details. You can also look at the read only repositories, which live in the opentelemetry…
read the full opentelemetry-php overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or opentelemetry-php more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and opentelemetry-php has 919. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and opentelemetry-php free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and opentelemetry-php under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and opentelemetry-php?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and opentelemetry-php in PHP. 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-php?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose opentelemetry-php if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.