head to head · open source
Prometheus vs postgres-operator
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars, 10,839 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. postgres-operator has 5,241 stars, 1,070 forks, 546 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Prometheus leads on adoption by 1,161% (66,109 vs 5,241 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; postgres-operator is written in Go under MIT. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, postgres-operator 20%. 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 13541 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Prometheus | postgres-operator | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 66K | ★ 5.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 postgres-operator if
- You want the postgres-operator feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and postgres-operator 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 postgres-operator
Postgres Operator is an MIT licensed Kubernetes operator, written in Go and developed at Zalando, that creates and manages highly available PostgreSQL clusters through Postgres manifests (CRDs), built for platform and infrastructure teams that want database as a service inside their own Kubernetes clusters.
read the full postgres-operator 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 postgres-operator more popular?
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars and postgres-operator has 5,241. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and postgres-operator free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and postgres-operator under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and postgres-operator?
Prometheus is written in Go and postgres-operator 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 postgres-operator?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,109 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose postgres-operator if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.