head to head · open source
Prometheus vs mysql
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars, 10,969 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mysql has 15,274 stars, 2,340 forks, 57 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Prometheus leads on adoption by 338% (66,906 vs 15,274 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; mysql is written in Go under MPL-2.0. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, mysql 15%. 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 | mysql | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 15K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| 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 mysql if
- You want the mysql feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and mysql 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 mysql
Go MySQL Driver A MySQL Driver for Go's database/sql package Features Requirements Installation Usage DSN (Data Source Name) Password Protocol Address Parameters Examples Connection pool and timeouts context.Context Support ColumnType Support LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE support time.Time support Unicode support Testing / Development License Features Lightweight and fast Native Go implementation. No C bindings, just pure Go Connections over TCP/IPv4, TCP/IPv6, Unix domain sockets or custom protocols Automatic handling of broken connections Automatic Connection Pooling (by database/sql package) Supports queries larger…
read the full mysql overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or mysql more popular?
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars and mysql has 15,274. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and mysql free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and mysql under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and mysql?
Prometheus is written in Go and mysql in Go. 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 mysql?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,906 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose mysql if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.