head to head · open source
Prometheus vs kombu
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars, 10,839 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. kombu has 3,141 stars, 1,043 forks, 217 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Prometheus leads on adoption by 2,005% (66,109 vs 3,141 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; kombu is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, kombu 33%. kombu 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 | kombu | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 66K | ★ 3.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 1.0K |
| 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 kombu if
- You want the kombu feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and kombu 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 kombu
Kombu is a BSD 3 Clause licensed Python messaging library that gives application authors an idiomatic, high level interface to the AMQP protocol and pluggable transports for Redis, Amazon SQS, MongoDB, PGMQ, ZooKeeper, SoftLayer MQ, and Pyro, aimed at Python developers and Celery based teams that need one consistent messaging API across several brokers.
read the full kombu overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or kombu more popular?
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars and kombu has 3,141. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and kombu free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and kombu under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and kombu?
Prometheus is written in Go and kombu 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 kombu?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,109 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose kombu if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.