head to head · open source
OpenObserve vs debug
OpenObserve has 21,993 GitHub stars, 1,091 forks, 598 open issues and last shipped yesterday. debug has 11,454 stars, 991 forks, 96 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. OpenObserve leads on adoption by 92% (21,993 vs 11,454 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 | ★ 22K | ★ 11K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-04-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 991 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick OpenObserve if
- You weight community size — 22K 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
OpenObserve is an open source observability platform for logs, metrics, traces, analytics, Real User Monitoring, session replay, pipelines, SLO, and LLM observability. It lives in the cloud native infrastructure ecosystem and is described as an alternative to Datadog, Splunk, and Elasticsearch. The project is built in Rust, ships as a single binary, and uses Parquet columnar storage with an S3 native design.
read the full OpenObserve overview →
About debug
debug is a tiny, MIT licensed JavaScript debugging utility modelled after Node.js core's debugging technique, and it is aimed at JavaScript developers and library authors who want to turn debug output on and off by namespace instead of editing or deleting logging statements.
read the full debug overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenObserve or debug more popular?
OpenObserve has 21,993 GitHub stars and debug has 11,454. 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 (21,993 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose debug if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.