head to head · open source
OpenObserve vs whisper
OpenObserve has 22,027 GitHub stars, 1,098 forks, 598 open issues and last shipped today. whisper has 1,261 stars, 322 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. OpenObserve leads on adoption by 1,647% (22,027 vs 1,261 stars). OpenObserve is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; whisper is written in Python under Apache-2.0. OpenObserve has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, whisper 26%. 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 | whisper | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 1.3K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2025-12-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 322 |
| 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 whisper if
- You want the whisper feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and whisper 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 whisper
Whisper is the file based time series database library at the storage layer of Graphite, built for operators and developers who need to record numeric metrics over time as plain files on disk rather than in a separate database server.
read the full whisper overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenObserve or whisper more popular?
OpenObserve has 22,027 GitHub stars and whisper has 1,261. OpenObserve has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenObserve and whisper free?
Both are open source. OpenObserve is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and whisper under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenObserve and whisper?
OpenObserve is written in TypeScript and whisper in Python. 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 whisper?
Choose OpenObserve if you want the larger community (22,027 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose whisper if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.