head to head · open source
Prometheus vs dbmate
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars, 10,839 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dbmate has 7,391 stars, 379 forks, 34 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Prometheus leads on adoption by 794% (66,109 vs 7,391 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; dbmate is written in Go under MIT. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, dbmate 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 | dbmate | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 66K | ★ 7.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 379 |
| 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 dbmate if
- You want the dbmate feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and dbmate 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 dbmate
Dbmate is a standalone, MIT licensed command line database migration tool written in Go that keeps database schema in sync across multiple developers and production servers, aimed at teams building database backed applications in any language or framework.
read the full dbmate overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or dbmate more popular?
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars and dbmate has 7,391. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and dbmate free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dbmate under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and dbmate?
Prometheus is written in Go and dbmate 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 dbmate?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,109 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dbmate if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.