head to head · open source
Prometheus vs crystal
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars, 10,839 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. crystal has 12,931 stars, 625 forks, 169 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Prometheus leads on adoption by 411% (66,109 vs 12,931 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; crystal is written in TypeScript under MIT. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, crystal 5%. 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 | crystal | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 66K | ★ 13K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 625 |
| 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 crystal if
- You want the crystal feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and crystal 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 crystal
Graphile's Crystal is a TypeScript monorepo of MIT licensed GraphQL tooling for the Node.js and PostgreSQL ecosystems, aimed at developers who want an auto generated, high performance GraphQL API over a PostgreSQL database or a faster execution engine for a GraphQL.js schema they already own.
read the full crystal overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or crystal more popular?
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars and crystal has 12,931. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and crystal free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and crystal under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and crystal?
Prometheus is written in Go and crystal in TypeScript. 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 crystal?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,109 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose crystal if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.