head to head · open source
OpenObserve vs telemetry
OpenObserve has 22,777 GitHub stars, 1,179 forks, 598 open issues and last shipped yesterday. telemetry has 923 stars, 76 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. OpenObserve leads on adoption by 2,368% (22,777 vs 923 stars). OpenObserve is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; telemetry is written in Erlang under Apache-2.0. OpenObserve has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, telemetry 8%. 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 | telemetry | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 923 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Erlang |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-09-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 76 |
| 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 telemetry if
- You want the telemetry feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Erlang
- You evaluated both and telemetry 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 telemetry
Telemetry Documentation Telemetry is a lightweight library for dynamic dispatching of events, with a focus on metrics and instrumentation. Any Erlang or Elixir library can use telemetry to emit events. Application code and other libraries can then hook into those events and run custom handlers. Note: this library is agnostic to tooling and therefore is not directly related to OpenTelemetry. For OpenTelemetry in the Erlang VM, see opentelemetry erlang, and check opentelemetry telemetry to connect both libraries. Usage In a nutshell, you register a custom module and function to be invoked for certain events, which…
read the full telemetry overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenObserve or telemetry more popular?
OpenObserve has 22,777 GitHub stars and telemetry has 923. OpenObserve has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenObserve and telemetry free?
Both are open source. OpenObserve is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and telemetry under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenObserve and telemetry?
OpenObserve is written in TypeScript and telemetry in Erlang. 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 telemetry?
Choose OpenObserve if you want the larger community (22,777 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose telemetry if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.