head to head · open source
Prometheus vs FerretDB
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars, 10,969 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. FerretDB has 11,111 stars, 493 forks, 448 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. Prometheus leads on adoption by 502% (66,906 vs 11,111 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; FerretDB is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, FerretDB 4%. Prometheus was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (hacktoberfest), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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 | FerretDB | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 11K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-06-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 493 |
| 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 FerretDB if
- You want the FerretDB 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 FerretDB 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 FerretDB
FerretDB [!TIP] Looking for FerretDB v1? It is there. FerretDB is an open source alternative to MongoDB. It is a proxy that converts MongoDB 5.0+ wire protocol queries to SQL and uses PostgreSQL with DocumentDB extension as a database engine. Why do we need FerretDB? MongoDB was originally an eye opening technology for many of us developers, empowering us to build applications faster than using relational databases. In its early days, its ease to use and well documented drivers made MongoDB one of the simplest database solutions available. However, as time passed, MongoDB abandoned its open source roots…
read the full FerretDB overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or FerretDB more popular?
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars and FerretDB has 11,111. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and FerretDB free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and FerretDB under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and FerretDB?
Prometheus is written in Go and FerretDB 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 FerretDB?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,906 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose FerretDB if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.