head to head · open source
Prometheus vs ibis
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars, 10,839 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. ibis has 6,661 stars, 767 forks, 544 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Prometheus leads on adoption by 892% (66,109 vs 6,661 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; ibis is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, ibis 12%. 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 | ibis | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 66K | ★ 6.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 767 |
| 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 ibis if
- You want the ibis 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 ibis 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 ibis
Ibis is the portable Python dataframe library: an Apache 2.0 framework that lets data engineers, analysts, and Python developers write one lazy dataframe expression and run it against more than twenty SQL and analytical backends, from a local DuckDB file to Snowflake, BigQuery, or PySpark.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or ibis more popular?
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars and ibis has 6,661. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and ibis free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and ibis under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and ibis?
Prometheus is written in Go and ibis 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 ibis?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,109 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose ibis if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.