head to head · open source
Grafana vs pmm
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pmm has 1,107 stars, 231 forks, 240 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 6,837% (76,792 vs 1,107 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; pmm is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, pmm 21%. pmm was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (hacktoberfest, 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 | pmm | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 231 |
| 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 pmm if
- You want the pmm feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and pmm 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 pmm
Percona Monitoring and Management (PMM) is an open source database monitoring, observability and management tool, licensed AGPL 3.0, that gives MySQL, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Valkey and Redis operators a single pane of glass over database performance, security and availability.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or pmm more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and pmm has 1,107. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and pmm free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and pmm under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and pmm?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and pmm in Go. 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 pmm?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose pmm if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.