head to head · open source
Prometheus vs pgdog
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars, 10,839 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. pgdog has 5,498 stars, 282 forks, 208 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Prometheus leads on adoption by 1,102% (66,109 vs 5,498 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; pgdog is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, pgdog 5%. pgdog 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 | pgdog | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 66K | ★ 5.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 282 |
| 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 pgdog if
- You want the pgdog feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and pgdog 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 pgdog
PgDog is an open source proxy for scaling PostgreSQL that pools connections, load balances queries across primary and replicas, and shards entire databases, written in Rust and aimed at teams whose PostgreSQL deployments have outgrown a single client to server connection per application process.
read the full pgdog overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or pgdog more popular?
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars and pgdog has 5,498. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and pgdog free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and pgdog under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and pgdog?
Prometheus is written in Go and pgdog 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 pgdog?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,109 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose pgdog if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.