head to head · open source
Prometheus vs bun
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars, 10,839 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. bun has 4,976 stars, 307 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped 29 days ago. Prometheus leads on adoption by 1,229% (66,109 vs 4,976 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; bun is written in Go under BSD-2-Clause. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, bun 6%. Prometheus was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Prometheus | bun | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 66K | ★ 5.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 307 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Prometheus if
- You weight community size — 66K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick bun if
- You want the bun feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and bun fits your workflow better
About Prometheus
Prometheus is an open source monitoring system and time series database, part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation ecosystem. It collects metrics from configured targets at defined intervals, evaluates alerting rules, and visualizes results. Designed for reliability in dynamic environments, it operates without reliance on distributed storage, ensuring each server node functions independently.
read the full Prometheus overview →
About bun
Bun is a lightweight, SQL first object relational mapper for Go that gives backend engineers type safe access to PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB, MSSQL, SQLite, and Oracle from one database agnostic codebase.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or bun more popular?
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars and bun has 4,976. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and bun free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and bun under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and bun?
Prometheus is written in Go and bun in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Prometheus or bun?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,109 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose bun if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.