head to head · open source
OpenObserve vs telemetry
OpenObserve has 22,027 GitHub stars, 1,098 forks, 598 open issues and last shipped today. telemetry has 922 stars, 74 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped 29 days ago. OpenObserve leads on adoption by 2,289% (22,027 vs 922 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 | ★ 22K | ★ 922 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Erlang |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-08-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 74 |
| 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 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
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 telemetry
Telemetry is a lightweight Erlang and Elixir library for dynamic dispatching of events, aimed at library authors who need to emit instrumentation and at application developers who want to hook custom handlers onto those events.
read the full telemetry overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenObserve or telemetry more popular?
OpenObserve has 22,027 GitHub stars and telemetry has 922. 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 (22,027 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.