head to head · open source
Grafana vs opentelemetry-ruby
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. opentelemetry-ruby has 606 stars, 301 forks, 144 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 12,572% (76,792 vs 606 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; opentelemetry-ruby is written in Ruby under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, opentelemetry-ruby 50%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (hacktoberfest, 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-ruby | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 606 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 301 |
| 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-ruby if
- You want the opentelemetry-ruby feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and opentelemetry-ruby 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-ruby
OpenTelemetry Ruby is the vendor neutral Ruby client for OpenTelemetry — an Apache 2.0 API and SDK that lets Ruby applications produce distributed traces, metrics and other telemetry — built for Ruby developers and platform teams who want observability data without committing to a single vendor's agent.
read the full opentelemetry-ruby overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or opentelemetry-ruby more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and opentelemetry-ruby has 606. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and opentelemetry-ruby free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and opentelemetry-ruby under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and opentelemetry-ruby?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and opentelemetry-ruby in Ruby. 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-ruby?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose opentelemetry-ruby if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.