head to head · open source
Grafana vs Sentry
Grafana has 77,627 GitHub stars, 14,895 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Sentry has 45,694 stars, 4,960 forks, 2,265 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 70% (77,627 vs 45,694 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; Sentry is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, Sentry 11%. 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 | Sentry | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 46K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 5.0K |
| 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 Sentry if
- You want the Sentry feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and Sentry 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 Sentry
Users and logs provide clues. Sentry provides answers. What's Sentry? Sentry is the debugging platform that helps every developer detect, trace, and fix issues. Code breaks, fix it faster. Official Sentry SDKs JavaScript Electron React Native Python Ruby PHP Laravel Go Rust Java/Kotlin Objective C/Swift C\ /F\ C/C++ Dart/Flutter Perl Clojure Elixir Unity Unreal Engine Godot Engine PowerShell Resources Documentation Discussions (Bugs, feature requests, general questions) Discord Contributing Bug Tracker Code Transifex (Translate Sentry\!)
read the full Sentry overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or Sentry more popular?
Grafana has 77,627 GitHub stars and Sentry has 45,694. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and Sentry free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0, and Sentry has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Grafana and Sentry?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and Sentry 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 Sentry?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,627 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Sentry if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.