head to head · open source
Grafana vs pg_activity
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pg_activity has 3,038 stars, 190 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 2,428% (76,792 vs 3,038 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; pg_activity is written in Python under PostgreSQL. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, pg_activity 6%. 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 | pg_activity | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 3.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | PostgreSQL |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-08-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 190 |
| 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 pg_activity if
- You want the pg_activity feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the PostgreSQL license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and pg_activity 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 pg_activity
pg activity is a top like command line tool for PostgreSQL server activity monitoring, built for database administrators, on call engineers, and developers who need real time visibility into what queries and sessions a PostgreSQL instance is running.
read the full pg_activity overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or pg_activity more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and pg_activity has 3,038. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and pg_activity free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and pg_activity under PostgreSQL. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and pg_activity?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and pg_activity 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 pg_activity?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose pg_activity if its feature set, stack or PostgreSQL licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.