head to head · open source
Grafana vs opentelemetry-python
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. opentelemetry-python has 2,702 stars, 1,057 forks, 425 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 2,773% (77,638 vs 2,702 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; opentelemetry-python is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, opentelemetry-python 39%. 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-python | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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-python if
- You want the opentelemetry-python feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and opentelemetry-python 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-python
OpenTelemetry Python Project Status See the OpenTelemetry Instrumentation for Python. Project versioning information and stability guarantees can be found here. Breaking Changes [!IMPORTANT] We are working on stabilizing the Log signal which would require making deprecations and breaking changes. We will try to reduce the releases that may require an update to your code, especially for instrumentations or for SDK developers. Getting started You can find the getting started guide for OpenTelemetry Python here. If you are looking for examples on how to use the OpenTelemetry API to instrument your code manually, or…
read the full opentelemetry-python overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or opentelemetry-python more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and opentelemetry-python has 2,702. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and opentelemetry-python free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and opentelemetry-python under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and opentelemetry-python?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and opentelemetry-python in Python. 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-python?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose opentelemetry-python if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.