head to head · open source
Prometheus vs neo4j
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars, 10,969 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. neo4j has 17,386 stars, 2,835 forks, 252 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. Prometheus leads on adoption by 285% (66,906 vs 17,386 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; neo4j is written in Java under GPL-3.0. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, neo4j 16%. Prometheus was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Prometheus | neo4j | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 17K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 2.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Prometheus if
- You weight community size — 67K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick neo4j if
- You want the neo4j feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and neo4j fits your workflow better
About Prometheus
Prometheus Visit prometheus.io for the full documentation, examples and guides. [ ][quay] [ ][hub] Prometheus, a Cloud Native Computing Foundation project, is a systems and service monitoring system. It collects metrics from configured targets at given intervals, evaluates rule expressions, displays the results, and can trigger alerts when specified conditions are observed. The features that distinguish Prometheus from other metrics and monitoring systems are: A multi dimensional data model (time series defined by metric name and set of key/value dimensions) PromQL, a powerful and flexible query language to…
read the full Prometheus overview →
About neo4j
= Neo4j: Graphs for Everyone = is the world's leading Graph Database. It is a high performance graph store with all the features expected of a mature and robust database, like a friendly query language and ACID transactions. The programmer works with a flexible network structure of nodes and relationships rather than static tables yet enjoys all the benefits of enterprise quality database. For many applications, Neo4j offers orders of magnitude performance benefits compared to relational DBs. Learn more on the website]. users]] == Using Neo4j == Neo4j is available as a fully managed solution where you can get…
read the full neo4j overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or neo4j more popular?
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars and neo4j has 17,386. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and neo4j free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and neo4j under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and neo4j?
Prometheus is written in Go and neo4j 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, Prometheus or neo4j?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,906 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose neo4j if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.