head to head · open source
Prometheus vs gel
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars, 10,969 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gel has 14,180 stars, 454 forks, 948 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. Prometheus leads on adoption by 372% (66,906 vs 14,180 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; gel is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, gel 3%. 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 | gel | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 14K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2025-12-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 454 |
| 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 gel if
- You want the gel feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and gel 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 gel
Gel Learn: build an app with Gel • Website • Docs • Blog • Discord • Twitter What is Gel? Gel is a new kind of database that takes the best parts of relational databases, graph databases, and ORMs. We call it a graph relational database . 🧩 Types, not tables 🧩 Schema is the foundation of your application. It should be something you can read, write, and understand. Forget foreign keys; tabular data modeling is a relic of an older age, and it isn't compatible with modern languages. Instead, Gel thinks about schema the same way you do: as object types containing properties connected by links . This example is…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or gel more popular?
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars and gel has 14,180. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and gel free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and gel under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and gel?
Prometheus is written in Go and gel in Python. 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 gel?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,906 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose gel if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.