head to head · open source
Grafana vs Prometheus
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped today. Prometheus has 66,109 stars, 10,839 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 16% (76,792 vs 66,109 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, Prometheus 16%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (alerting, hacktoberfest, metrics, 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 | Prometheus | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 66K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 11K |
| 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 Prometheus if
- You want the Prometheus feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Prometheus 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 Prometheus
Prometheus is an open source monitoring system and time series database, part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation ecosystem. It collects metrics from configured targets at defined intervals, evaluates alerting rules, and visualizes results. Designed for reliability in dynamic environments, it operates without reliance on distributed storage, ensuring each server node functions independently.
read the full Prometheus overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or Prometheus more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and Prometheus has 66,109. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and Prometheus free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Prometheus under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and Prometheus?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and Prometheus 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 Prometheus?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Prometheus if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.