head to head · open source
beszel vs OpenObserve
beszel has 26,783 GitHub stars, 1,138 forks, 313 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. OpenObserve has 22,699 stars, 1,174 forks, 598 open issues and last shipped yesterday. beszel leads on adoption by 18% (26,783 vs 22,699 stars). beszel is written in Go under MIT; OpenObserve is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. beszel has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, OpenObserve 5%. OpenObserve 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
| beszel | OpenObserve | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 23K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick beszel if
- You weight community size — 27K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick OpenObserve if
- You want the OpenObserve feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and OpenObserve fits your workflow better
About beszel
Beszel Beszel is a lightweight server monitoring platform that includes Docker statistics, historical data, and alert functions. It has a friendly web interface, simple configuration, and is ready to use out of the box. It supports automatic backup, multi user, OAuth authentication, and API access. Features Lightweight : Smaller and less resource intensive than leading solutions. Simple : Easy setup with little manual configuration required. Docker stats : Tracks CPU, memory, and network usage history for each container. ZFS : Tracks pool capacity, health, and I/O, plus per dataset usage. Alerts : Configurable…
read the full beszel overview →
About OpenObserve
Open source Datadog alternative for logs, metrics, traces, and frontend monitoring. Modern observability platform: 10x easier, 140x lower storage cost, high performance, petabyte scale. Cloud · Documentation · Slack · Quickstart OpenObserve (O2) is a cloud native observability platform for logs, metrics, traces, analytics, Real User Monitoring (RUM), and AI/LLM observability. It's a cost effective alternative to Datadog, Splunk, and Elasticsearch for teams that need full observability without the complexity or cost — with Parquet columnar storage and an S3 native design that cuts storage costs by up to 140x…
read the full OpenObserve overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is beszel or OpenObserve more popular?
beszel has 26,783 GitHub stars and OpenObserve has 22,699. beszel has the larger community by that measure.
Are beszel and OpenObserve free?
Both are open source. beszel is licensed under MIT and OpenObserve under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between beszel and OpenObserve?
beszel is written in Go and OpenObserve in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, beszel or OpenObserve?
Choose beszel if you want the larger community (26,783 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose OpenObserve if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.