head to head · open source
Grafana vs sysstat
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sysstat has 3,367 stars, 489 forks, 75 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 2,181% (76,792 vs 3,367 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; sysstat is written in C under GPL-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, sysstat 15%. 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 | sysstat | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 3.4K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-12 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 489 |
| 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 sysstat if
- You want the sysstat feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and sysstat 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 sysstat
sysstat is a GPL 2.0 licensed collection of C utilities that report and historize Linux system performance data, built for system administrators, SREs, and performance engineers who need per device, per CPU, and per process measurements on hosts they control.
read the full sysstat overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or sysstat more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and sysstat has 3,367. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and sysstat free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and sysstat under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and sysstat?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and sysstat 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 sysstat?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose sysstat if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.