head to head · open source
Grafana vs metrics
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. metrics has 17,365 stars, 2,300 forks, 68 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 347% (77,638 vs 17,365 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; metrics is written in JavaScript under MIT. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, metrics 13%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (metrics), 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 | metrics | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 17K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-05-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Grafana if
- You weight community size — 78K 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 metrics if
- You want the metrics feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and metrics fits your workflow better
About Grafana
The open source platform for monitoring and observability Grafana allows you to query, visualize, alert on and understand your metrics no matter where they are stored. Create, explore, and share dashboards with your team and foster a data driven culture: Visualizations: Fast and flexible client side graphs with a multitude of options. Panel plugins offer many different ways to visualize metrics and logs. Dynamic Dashboards: Create dynamic & reusable dashboards with template variables that appear as dropdowns at the top of the dashboard. Explore Metrics: Explore your data through ad hoc queries and dynamic…
read the full Grafana overview →
About metrics
📊 Metrics Generate metrics that can be embedded everywhere, including your GitHub profile readme! Supports users, organizations, and even repositories! For user accounts For organization accounts 🧩 Customizable with 47 plugins and 335 options! 📅 Isometric commit calendar 🈷️ Languages activity Full year calendar Half year calendar Indepth analysis (clone and analyze repositories) Recently used (analyze recent activity events) Default algorithm Default algorithm (with details) ✨ Stargazers 👨💻 Lines of code changed Classic charts Graph charts Worldmap Repositories and diff history Compact display in base…
read the full metrics overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or metrics more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and metrics has 17,365. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and metrics free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and metrics under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and metrics?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and metrics in JavaScript. 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 metrics?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose metrics if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.