head to head · open source
Grafana vs pcm
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pcm has 3,331 stars, 528 forks, 69 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 2,205% (76,792 vs 3,331 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; pcm is written in C++ under BSD-3-Clause. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, pcm 16%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (monitoring), 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 | pcm | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 3.3K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | TypeScript | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 528 |
| 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 pcm if
- You want the pcm feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and pcm 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 pcm
Intel® Performance Counter Monitor (Intel® PCM) is a BSD 3 Clause licensed C++ API and command line toolset from Intel for monitoring the performance and energy metrics of Intel® Core™, Xeon®, Atom™ and Xeon Phi™ processors.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or pcm more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and pcm has 3,331. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and pcm free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and pcm under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and pcm?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and pcm 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 pcm?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose pcm if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.