head to head · open source
Grafana vs PhpMetrics
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. PhpMetrics has 2,616 stars, 261 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 2,868% (77,638 vs 2,616 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; PhpMetrics is written in PHP under MIT. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, PhpMetrics 10%. 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 | PhpMetrics | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 2.6K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-08-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 261 |
| 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 PhpMetrics if
- You want the PhpMetrics feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and PhpMetrics 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 PhpMetrics
PhpMetrics PhpMetrics provides metrics about PHP project and classes, with beautiful and readable HTML report. Documentation Twitter Contributing Quick start Follow the quick start guide to get started. Then open the generated ./myreport/index.html file in your browser. You can use a configuration file to customize the report, add options, configure rules for Continuous Integration, etc. Metrics You'll find detailed list of metrics in documentation, or running php ./vendor/bin/phpmetrics metrics Author + Jean François Lépine License See the LICENSE file. Contributing See the CONTRIBUTING file. Support the…
read the full PhpMetrics overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or PhpMetrics more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and PhpMetrics has 2,616. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and PhpMetrics free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and PhpMetrics under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and PhpMetrics?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and PhpMetrics 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 PhpMetrics?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose PhpMetrics if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.