head to head · open source
Grafana vs prometheus-operator
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. prometheus-operator has 9,993 stars, 3,894 forks, 296 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 677% (77,638 vs 9,993 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; prometheus-operator is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, prometheus-operator 39%. Grafana 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 | prometheus-operator | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 10.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 3.9K |
| 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 prometheus-operator if
- You want the prometheus-operator 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-operator 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 prometheus-operator
Prometheus Operator Overview The Prometheus Operator provides Kubernetes native deployment and management of Prometheus and related monitoring components. The purpose of this project is to simplify and automate the configuration of a Prometheus based monitoring stack for Kubernetes clusters. The Prometheus operator includes, but is not limited to, the following features: Kubernetes Custom Resources : Use Kubernetes custom resources to deploy and manage Prometheus, Alertmanager, and related components. Simplified Deployment Configuration : Configure the fundamentals of Prometheus like versions, persistence…
read the full prometheus-operator overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or prometheus-operator more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and prometheus-operator has 9,993. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and prometheus-operator free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and prometheus-operator under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and prometheus-operator?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and prometheus-operator 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-operator?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose prometheus-operator if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.