head to head · open source
OpenObserve vs m3
OpenObserve has 22,777 GitHub stars, 1,179 forks, 598 open issues and last shipped yesterday. m3 has 4,909 stars, 461 forks, 222 open issues and last shipped 16 days ago. OpenObserve leads on adoption by 364% (22,777 vs 4,909 stars). OpenObserve is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; m3 is written in Go under Apache-2.0. OpenObserve has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, m3 9%. 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 | m3 | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 4.9K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 461 |
| 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 m3 if
- You want the m3 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 m3 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 m3
M3 [![GoDoc][doc img]][doc] [![Build Status][ci img]][ci] [![FOSSA Status][fossa img]][fossa] Distributed TSDB and Query Engine, Prometheus Sidecar, Metrics Aggregator, and more such as Graphite storage and query engine. Table of Contents More Information Install Dependencies Usage Contributing More Information Documentation Contributing Slack Forum (Google Group) Community Meetings You can find recordings of past meetups here: . Install Dependencies The simplest and quickest way to try M3 is to use Docker, read the M3 quickstart section for other options. This example uses jq to format the output of API calls…
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenObserve or m3 more popular?
OpenObserve has 22,777 GitHub stars and m3 has 4,909. OpenObserve has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenObserve and m3 free?
Both are open source. OpenObserve is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and m3 under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenObserve and m3?
OpenObserve is written in TypeScript and m3 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 m3?
Choose OpenObserve if you want the larger community (22,777 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose m3 if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.