head to head · open source
metrics vs thanos
metrics has 17,202 GitHub stars, 2,275 forks, 68 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. thanos has 14,207 stars, 2,369 forks, 908 open issues and last shipped yesterday. metrics leads on adoption by 21% (17,202 vs 14,207 stars). metrics is written in JavaScript under MIT; thanos is written in Go under Apache-2.0. metrics has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, thanos 17%. thanos 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
| metrics | thanos | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 14K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-05-29 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 2.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick metrics if
- You weight community size — 17K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick thanos if
- You want the thanos 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 thanos fits your workflow better
About metrics
Metrics is an infographics generator for GitHub accounts, published under the MIT license and written in JavaScript. It lives in the GitHub ecosystem as a GitHub Action and as a hosted web service, and it produces statistics about a user, an organization, or a repository. The output is rendered as SVG, Markdown, PDF, or JSON, which means the same generated figures can be embedded in a profile readme, attached to a blog post, or consumed by another tool.
read the full metrics overview →
About thanos
Thanos is a CNCF Incubating, Apache 2.0 licensed collection of Go components that composes a highly available metric system with unlimited storage capacity on top of an existing Prometheus deployment.
read the full thanos overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is metrics or thanos more popular?
metrics has 17,202 GitHub stars and thanos has 14,207. metrics has the larger community by that measure.
Are metrics and thanos free?
Both are open source. metrics is licensed under MIT and thanos under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between metrics and thanos?
metrics is written in JavaScript and thanos 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, metrics or thanos?
Choose metrics if you want the larger community (17,202 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose thanos if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.