head to head · open source
Grafana vs skydive
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped today. skydive has 2,798 stars, 414 forks, 119 open issues and last shipped 12 months ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 2,645% (76,792 vs 2,798 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; skydive is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, skydive 15%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (metrics, 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 | skydive | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2025-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 414 |
| 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 skydive if
- You want the skydive 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 skydive 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 skydive
Skydive Skydive is an open source real time network topology and protocols analyzer. It aims to provide a comprehensive way of understanding what is happening in the network infrastructure. Skydive agents collect topology information and flows and forward them to a central agent for further analysis. All the information is stored in an Elasticsearch database. Skydive is SDN agnostic but provides SDN drivers in order to enhance the topology and flows information. Key features Captures network topology and flows Full history of network topology and flows Distributed Ability to follow a flow along a path in the topo…
read the full skydive overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or skydive more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and skydive has 2,798. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and skydive free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and skydive under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and skydive?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and skydive 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 skydive?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose skydive if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.