head to head · open source
Prometheus vs bun
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars, 10,969 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. bun has 5,004 stars, 316 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Prometheus leads on adoption by 1,237% (66,906 vs 5,004 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 | ★ 67K | ★ 5.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 316 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Prometheus if
- You weight community size — 67K 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 Visit prometheus.io for the full documentation, examples and guides. [ ][quay] [ ][hub] Prometheus, a Cloud Native Computing Foundation project, is a systems and service monitoring system. It collects metrics from configured targets at given intervals, evaluates rule expressions, displays the results, and can trigger alerts when specified conditions are observed. The features that distinguish Prometheus from other metrics and monitoring systems are: A multi dimensional data model (time series defined by metric name and set of key/value dimensions) PromQL, a powerful and flexible query language to…
read the full Prometheus overview →
About bun
Bun: SQL first Golang ORM Lightweight, SQL first Golang ORM for PostgreSQL, MySQL, MSSQL, SQLite, and Oracle Bun is a modern ORM that embraces SQL rather than hiding it. Write complex queries in Go with type safety, powerful scanning capabilities, and database agnostic code that works across multiple SQL databases. ✨ Key Features SQL first approach Write elegant, readable queries that feel like SQL Multi database support PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB, MSSQL, SQLite, and Oracle Type safe operations Leverage Go's static typing for compile time safety Flexible scanning Query results into structs, maps, scalars, or…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or bun more popular?
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars and bun has 5,004. 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 (66,906 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.