head to head · open source
Prometheus vs lowdb
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars, 10,969 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lowdb has 22,584 stars, 962 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. Prometheus leads on adoption by 196% (66,906 vs 22,584 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; lowdb is written in JavaScript under MIT. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, lowdb 4%. 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Prometheus | lowdb | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 23K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-03-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 962 |
| 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 lowdb if
- You want the lowdb feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and lowdb 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 lowdb
lowdb Simple to use type safe local JSON database 🦉 If you know JavaScript, you know how to use lowdb. Read or create db.json Use plain JavaScript to change data In the same spirit, query using native Array functions: It's that simple. db.data is just a JavaScript object, no magic. Sponsors Become a sponsor and have your company logo here 👉 GitHub Sponsors Features Lightweight Minimalist TypeScript Plain JavaScript Safe atomic writes Hackable: Change storage, file format (JSON, YAML, ...) or add encryption via adapters Extend it with lodash, ramda, ... for super powers! Automatically switches to fast in memory…
read the full lowdb overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Databases projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Databases field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or lowdb more popular?
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars and lowdb has 22,584. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and lowdb free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and lowdb under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and lowdb?
Prometheus is written in Go and lowdb in JavaScript. 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 lowdb?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,906 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose lowdb if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.