head to head · open source
Grafana vs quill
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped today. quill has 3,031 stars, 274 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 2,434% (76,792 vs 3,031 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; quill is written in C++ under MIT. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, quill 9%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | quill | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 3.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 274 |
| 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 quill if
- You want the quill feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and quill 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 quill
Quill Ultra Low Latency Asynchronous C++17 Logging and Metrics Library 🔬 Try It Online · 🚀 Benchmarks · 📚 Documentation · ⚡ Recipes · ❓ FAQ 🐛 Report Bug · 💡 Request Feature 🧭 Table of Contents Introduction Quick Start Features Performance Usage Design Caveats License ✨ Introduction Quill is an asynchronous logging and metrics library for C++17 and later . It keeps formatting and I/O away from latency sensitive application threads by encoding log arguments on the frontend and processing them on a dedicated backend worker. Low Frontend Latency : Log arguments are encoded and queued for asynchronous processing…
read the full quill overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or quill more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and quill has 3,031. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and quill free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and quill under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and quill?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and quill in C++. 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 quill?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose quill if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.