head to head · open source
OpenObserve vs debug
OpenObserve has 22,699 GitHub stars, 1,174 forks, 598 open issues and last shipped yesterday. debug has 11,456 stars, 997 forks, 96 open issues and last shipped 20 days ago. OpenObserve leads on adoption by 98% (22,699 vs 11,456 stars). OpenObserve is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; debug is written in JavaScript under MIT. OpenObserve has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, debug 9%. 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
| OpenObserve | debug | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 11K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 997 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick OpenObserve if
- You weight community size — 23K 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 debug if
- You want the debug feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and debug fits your workflow better
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 →
About debug
debug A tiny JavaScript debugging utility modelled after Node.js core's debugging technique. Works in Node.js and web browsers. Installation Usage debug exposes a function; simply pass this function the name of your module, and it will return a decorated version of console.error for you to pass debug statements to. This will allow you to toggle the debug output for different parts of your module as well as the module as a whole. Example app.js : Example worker.js : The DEBUG environment variable is then used to enable these based on space or comma delimited names. Here are some examples: Windows command prompt…
read the full debug overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenObserve or debug more popular?
OpenObserve has 22,699 GitHub stars and debug has 11,456. OpenObserve has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenObserve and debug free?
Both are open source. OpenObserve is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and debug under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenObserve and debug?
OpenObserve is written in TypeScript and debug 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, OpenObserve or debug?
Choose OpenObserve if you want the larger community (22,699 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose debug if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.