head to head · open source
OpenObserve vs grimoirelab
OpenObserve has 22,027 GitHub stars, 1,098 forks, 598 open issues and last shipped today. grimoirelab has 626 stars, 231 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. OpenObserve leads on adoption by 3,419% (22,027 vs 626 stars). OpenObserve is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; grimoirelab is written in Shell under GPL-3.0. OpenObserve has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, grimoirelab 37%. OpenObserve 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
| OpenObserve | grimoirelab | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 626 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Shell |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 231 |
| 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 grimoirelab if
- You want the grimoirelab feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You evaluated both and grimoirelab 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 grimoirelab
GrimoireLab is a GPL 3.0 licensed CHAOSS toolset for software development analytics that retrieves data from the systems used to support software development, stores it in databases, enriches it by computing metrics, and makes it available for analytics and visualization, aimed at the people who need to measure development activity rather than guess at it.
read the full grimoirelab overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenObserve or grimoirelab more popular?
OpenObserve has 22,027 GitHub stars and grimoirelab has 626. OpenObserve has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenObserve and grimoirelab free?
Both are open source. OpenObserve is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and grimoirelab under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenObserve and grimoirelab?
OpenObserve is written in TypeScript and grimoirelab in Shell. 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 grimoirelab?
Choose OpenObserve if you want the larger community (22,027 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose grimoirelab if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.