head to head · open source
Grafana vs psutil
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars, 14,749 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. psutil has 11,276 stars, 1,514 forks, 258 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 581% (76,791 vs 11,276 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; psutil is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, psutil 13%. 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 | psutil | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 11K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| 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 psutil if
- You want the psutil feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and psutil 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 psutil
psutil is a cross platform Python library for retrieving information about running processes and system utilization — CPU, memory, disks, network and sensors — for developers and operators who need that data programmatically from inside Python code rather than from shell output.
read the full psutil overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or psutil more popular?
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars and psutil has 11,276. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and psutil free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and psutil under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and psutil?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and psutil 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 psutil?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,791 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose psutil if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.