head to head · open source
OpenObserve vs ktop
OpenObserve has 22,027 GitHub stars, 1,098 forks, 598 open issues and last shipped today. ktop has 1,109 stars, 25 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. OpenObserve leads on adoption by 1,886% (22,027 vs 1,109 stars). OpenObserve is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; ktop is written in Go under Apache-2.0. OpenObserve has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, ktop 2%. 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 | ktop | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-07-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 25 |
| 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 ktop if
- You want the ktop feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and ktop 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 ktop
ktop is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Go based terminal tool that shows live metrics for nodes, pods, and containers in a Kubernetes cluster, built for operators and developers who want top style cluster visibility without installing anything inside the cluster.
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenObserve or ktop more popular?
OpenObserve has 22,027 GitHub stars and ktop has 1,109. OpenObserve has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenObserve and ktop free?
Both are open source. OpenObserve is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and ktop under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenObserve and ktop?
OpenObserve is written in TypeScript and ktop in Go. 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 ktop?
Choose OpenObserve if you want the larger community (22,027 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose ktop if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.