head to head · open source
OpenObserve vs metrics
OpenObserve has 22,027 GitHub stars, 1,098 forks, 598 open issues and last shipped today. metrics has 17,205 stars, 2,278 forks, 68 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. OpenObserve leads on adoption by 28% (22,027 vs 17,205 stars). OpenObserve is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; metrics is written in JavaScript under MIT. OpenObserve has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, metrics 13%. 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 | metrics | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 17K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-05-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| 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 metrics if
- You want the metrics feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and metrics 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 metrics
Metrics is an infographics generator for GitHub accounts, published under the MIT license and written in JavaScript. It lives in the GitHub ecosystem as a GitHub Action and as a hosted web service, and it produces statistics about a user, an organization, or a repository. The output is rendered as SVG, Markdown, PDF, or JSON, which means the same generated figures can be embedded in a profile readme, attached to a blog post, or consumed by another tool.
read the full metrics overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenObserve or metrics more popular?
OpenObserve has 22,027 GitHub stars and metrics has 17,205. OpenObserve has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenObserve and metrics free?
Both are open source. OpenObserve is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and metrics under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenObserve and metrics?
OpenObserve is written in TypeScript and metrics 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 metrics?
Choose OpenObserve if you want the larger community (22,027 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose metrics if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.