head to head · open source
Prometheus vs centrifugo
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars, 10,969 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. centrifugo has 10,942 stars, 749 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Prometheus leads on adoption by 511% (66,906 vs 10,942 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; centrifugo is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, centrifugo 7%. 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Prometheus | centrifugo | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 11K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 749 |
| 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 centrifugo if
- You want the centrifugo feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and centrifugo 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 centrifugo
Centrifugo Scalable real time messaging server in a language agnostic way. Centrifugo is an open source scalable real time messaging server. It instantly delivers messages to application online users connected over supported transports (WebSocket, HTTP streaming, Server Sent Events (aka EventSource), GRPC, WebTransport). Centrifugo has the concept of channel subscriptions – so it's a user facing PUB/SUB server. Centrifugo is language agnostic and can be used to build chat apps, live comments, multiplayer games, real time data visualizations, collaborative tools, AI streaming responses, etc. in combination with…
read the full centrifugo overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Databases projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Databases field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or centrifugo more popular?
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars and centrifugo has 10,942. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and centrifugo free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and centrifugo under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and centrifugo?
Prometheus is written in Go and centrifugo 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 centrifugo?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,906 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose centrifugo if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.