head to head · open source
Grafana vs witr
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars, 14,749 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. witr has 22,374 stars, 781 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 243% (76,791 vs 22,374 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; witr is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, witr 3%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (go, 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 | witr | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 22K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 781 |
| 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 witr if
- You want the witr 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 witr 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 witr
witr is an open source, Apache 2.0 licensed Go tool with both a command line interface and an interactive terminal UI that traces any process, port, container, or file back to the exact chain of systems that started it, and it is built for operators, SREs, and developers who need to answer "why is this running?" during debugging and incident response.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or witr more popular?
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars and witr has 22,374. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and witr free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and witr under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and witr?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and witr 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 witr?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,791 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose witr if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.