head to head · open source
Grafana vs pinpoint
Grafana has 76,813 GitHub stars, 14,758 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped today. pinpoint has 13,872 stars, 3,749 forks, 543 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 454% (76,813 vs 13,872 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; pinpoint is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, pinpoint 27%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (monitoring), 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
| Grafana | pinpoint | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 14K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 3.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Grafana if
- You weight community size — 77K 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 pinpoint if
- You want the pinpoint feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and pinpoint fits your workflow better
About Grafana
Grafana is an open source observability platform for visualizing metrics, logs, and traces across diverse data sources. It runs in the infrastructure and operations ecosystem, designed for teams needing unified visibility into system behavior without vendor lock in. Built with TypeScript and Go, it provides a composable architecture that integrates with existing toolchains.
read the full Grafana overview →
About pinpoint
Pinpoint is an open source Application Performance Management (APM) tool built for large scale distributed systems. It is written primarily in Java and also supports applications written in PHP and Python through a separate agent repository. Inspired by Google's Dapper, it provides a way to analyze the overall structure of a system and how the components inside it are interconnected by tracing transactions across distributed applications. The project lives in the Java ecosystem, is licensed under Apache 2.0, and has been developed for around twelve years, with its current stable release being v3.1.0.…
read the full pinpoint overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or pinpoint more popular?
Grafana has 76,813 GitHub stars and pinpoint has 13,872. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and pinpoint free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and pinpoint under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and pinpoint?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and pinpoint in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Grafana or pinpoint?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,813 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose pinpoint if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.