head to head · open source
Grafana vs hertzbeat
Grafana has 76,813 GitHub stars, 14,758 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped today. hertzbeat has 7,398 stars, 1,330 forks, 313 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 938% (76,813 vs 7,398 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; hertzbeat is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, hertzbeat 18%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (alerting, grafana, 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 | hertzbeat | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 7.4K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-18 |
| 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 hertzbeat if
- You want the hertzbeat feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and hertzbeat 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 hertzbeat
Apache HertzBeat is an AI powered, next generation open source real time observability system written in Java under the Apache 2.0 licence, built for teams that need unified metrics and logs collection, centralized alerting distribution, and intelligent management and analysis without deploying an agent on every monitored host.
read the full hertzbeat overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or hertzbeat more popular?
Grafana has 76,813 GitHub stars and hertzbeat has 7,398. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and hertzbeat free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and hertzbeat under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and hertzbeat?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and hertzbeat in Java. 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 hertzbeat?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,813 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose hertzbeat if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.