head to head · open source
Prometheus vs HelixDB
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars, 10,969 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. HelixDB has 6,266 stars, 393 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Prometheus leads on adoption by 968% (66,906 vs 6,266 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; HelixDB is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, HelixDB 6%. 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 | HelixDB | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 6.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 393 |
| 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 HelixDB if
- You want the HelixDB feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and HelixDB 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 HelixDB
HelixDB : a graph vector database for knowledge graphs and AI memory. Built from scratch in Rust. website docs discord X/twitter HelixDB is a database that makes it easy to build all the components needed for AI applications in a single platform. You don't need a separate application DB, relational DB, vector DB, graph DB, or application layers to manage the multiple storage locations. HelixDB gives your agents federated access to company data, for memory, company brains, and applications. Helix primarily operates with a graph + vector data model, but it also supports KV, documents, and relational data. Getting…
read the full HelixDB overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or HelixDB more popular?
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars and HelixDB has 6,266. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and HelixDB free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and HelixDB under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and HelixDB?
Prometheus is written in Go and HelixDB in Rust. 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 HelixDB?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,906 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose HelixDB if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.