head to head · open source
Prometheus vs Neon Postgres
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars, 10,969 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Neon Postgres has 23,292 stars, 1,132 forks, 558 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Prometheus leads on adoption by 187% (66,906 vs 23,292 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Neon Postgres is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, Neon Postgres 5%. 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 | Neon Postgres | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 23K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-08-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 Neon Postgres if
- You want the Neon Postgres 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 Neon Postgres 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 Neon Postgres
Neon Neon is an open source serverless Postgres database platform. It separates storage and compute and substitutes the PostgreSQL storage layer by redistributing data across a cluster of nodes. Quick start Try the Neon Free Tier to create a serverless Postgres instance. Then connect to it with your preferred Postgres client (psql, dbeaver, etc) or use the online SQL Editor. See Connect from any application for connection instructions. Alternatively, compile and run the project locally. Architecture overview A Neon installation consists of compute nodes and the Neon storage engine. Compute nodes are stateless…
read the full Neon Postgres 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 Neon Postgres more popular?
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars and Neon Postgres has 23,292. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and Neon Postgres free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Neon Postgres under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and Neon Postgres?
Prometheus is written in Go and Neon Postgres 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 Neon Postgres?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,906 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Neon Postgres if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.