head to head · open source
Prometheus vs cassandra
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars, 10,969 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cassandra has 10,132 stars, 4,072 forks, 529 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Prometheus leads on adoption by 560% (66,906 vs 10,132 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; cassandra is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, cassandra 40%. cassandra 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 | cassandra | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 10K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 4.1K |
| 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 cassandra if
- You want the cassandra 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 cassandra 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 cassandra
image: link= image: Status, link= image: Downloads, link= image: Pulls, link= image: link= image: link= image: link= image: link= Apache Cassandra Apache Cassandra is a highly scalable partitioned row store. Rows are organized into tables with a required primary key. means that Cassandra can distribute your data across multiple machines in an application transparent matter. Cassandra will automatically repartition as machines are added and removed from the cluster. store] means that like relational databases, Cassandra organizes data by rows and columns. The Cassandra Query Language (CQL) is a close relative of…
read the full cassandra overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or cassandra more popular?
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars and cassandra has 10,132. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and cassandra free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and cassandra under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and cassandra?
Prometheus is written in Go and cassandra 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, Prometheus or cassandra?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,906 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose cassandra if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.