head to head · open source
Grafana vs RedELK
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. RedELK has 2,670 stars, 391 forks, 13 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 2,776% (76,792 vs 2,670 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; RedELK is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, RedELK 15%. RedELK was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (elasticsearch, 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 | RedELK | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 391 |
| 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 RedELK if
- You want the RedELK 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 RedELK 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 RedELK
RedELK is a red team's SIEM — an Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana based system that collects operational logs from red team teamservers and traffic logs from redirectors into one enriched central location, built for red team operators and for the white teams that need oversight of long running engagements.
read the full RedELK overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or RedELK more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and RedELK has 2,670. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and RedELK free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and RedELK under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and RedELK?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and RedELK 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 RedELK?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose RedELK if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.