head to head · open source
OpenObserve vs whisper
OpenObserve has 22,777 GitHub stars, 1,179 forks, 598 open issues and last shipped yesterday. whisper has 1,260 stars, 320 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 11 months ago. OpenObserve leads on adoption by 1,708% (22,777 vs 1,260 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 25%. 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 | ★ 23K | ★ 1.3K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2025-12-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 320 |
| 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 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
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 whisper
Whisper Overview Whisper is one of three components within the Graphite project: 1. Graphite Web, a Django based web application that renders graphs and dashboards 2. The Carbon metric processing daemons 3. The Whisper time series database library Whisper is a fixed size database, similar in design and purpose to RRD (round robin database). It provides fast, reliable storage of numeric data over time. Whisper allows for higher resolution (seconds per point) of recent data to degrade into lower resolutions for long term retention of historical data. Installation, Configuration and Usage Please refer to the…
read the full whisper overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenObserve or whisper more popular?
OpenObserve has 22,777 GitHub stars and whisper has 1,260. 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 (22,777 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.