head to head · open source
Grafana vs Zabbix
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars, 14,749 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Zabbix has 6,382 stars, 1,259 forks, 108 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 1,103% (76,791 vs 6,382 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; Zabbix is written in Go Template under AGPL-3.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, Zabbix 20%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (alerting, 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 | Zabbix | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 6.4K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go Template |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| 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 Zabbix if
- You want the Zabbix feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go Template
- You evaluated both and Zabbix 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 Zabbix
Zabbix is an enterprise class, open source distributed monitoring solution that measures the performance and availability of network devices, servers, services, and other IT resources. The project lives in the open source infrastructure monitoring and observability ecosystem, and its source is distributed under the AGPL 3.0 only license, with the repository carrying 6,374 stars and 1,255 forks. It is written using Go Template and is hosted by the Zabbix project at zabbix.com, where the download and documentation entry points are published. The stated scope runs from a simple standalone application through to a la…
read the full Zabbix overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or Zabbix more popular?
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars and Zabbix has 6,382. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and Zabbix free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Zabbix under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and Zabbix?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and Zabbix in Go Template. 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 Zabbix?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,791 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Zabbix if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.