head to head · open source
OpenObserve vs swift-metrics
OpenObserve has 22,777 GitHub stars, 1,179 forks, 598 open issues and last shipped yesterday. swift-metrics has 798 stars, 83 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. OpenObserve leads on adoption by 2,754% (22,777 vs 798 stars). OpenObserve is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; swift-metrics is written in Swift under Apache-2.0. OpenObserve has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, swift-metrics 10%. 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 | swift-metrics | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 798 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Swift |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 83 |
| 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 swift-metrics if
- You want the swift-metrics feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- You evaluated both and swift-metrics 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 swift-metrics
SwiftMetrics A Metrics API package for Swift. Almost all production server software needs to emit metrics information for observability. Because it's unlikely that all parties can agree on one specific metrics backend implementation, this API is designed to establish a standard that can be implemented by various metrics libraries which then post the metrics data to backends like Prometheus, Graphite, publish over statsd, write to disk, etc. This is the beginning of a community driven open source project actively seeking contributions, be it code, documentation, or ideas. Apart from contributing to SwiftMetrics…
read the full swift-metrics overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenObserve or swift-metrics more popular?
OpenObserve has 22,777 GitHub stars and swift-metrics has 798. OpenObserve has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenObserve and swift-metrics free?
Both are open source. OpenObserve is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and swift-metrics under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenObserve and swift-metrics?
OpenObserve is written in TypeScript and swift-metrics in Swift. 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 swift-metrics?
Choose OpenObserve if you want the larger community (22,777 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose swift-metrics if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.