head to head · open source
metrics vs thanos
metrics has 17,365 GitHub stars, 2,300 forks, 68 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. thanos has 14,266 stars, 2,404 forks, 908 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. metrics leads on adoption by 22% (17,365 vs 14,266 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 | 2026-10-30 |
| 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 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 →
About thanos
📢 ThanosCon happened on 19th March 2024 as a co located half day on KubeCon EU in Paris. Overview Thanos is a set of components that can be composed into a highly available metric system with unlimited storage capacity, which can be added seamlessly on top of existing Prometheus deployments. Thanos is a CNCF Incubating project. Thanos leverages the Prometheus 2.0 storage format to cost efficiently store historical metric data in any object storage while retaining fast query latencies. Additionally, it provides a global query view across all Prometheus installations and can merge data from Prometheus HA pairs on…
read the full thanos overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is metrics or thanos more popular?
metrics has 17,365 GitHub stars and thanos has 14,266. 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 (17,365 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose thanos if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.