head to head · open source
Prometheus vs q
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars, 10,839 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. q has 10,360 stars, 425 forks, 132 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. Prometheus leads on adoption by 538% (66,109 vs 10,360 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; q is written in Python under GPL-3.0. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, q 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.
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Side by side
| Prometheus | q | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 66K | ★ 10K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-02-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 425 |
| 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 q if
- You want the q feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and q 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 q
q is a Python command line tool, licensed under GPL 3.0, that runs SQL statements directly against delimited text files and multi file SQLite databases without importing the data into a database server first.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or q more popular?
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars and q has 10,360. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and q free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and q under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and q?
Prometheus is written in Go and q in Python. 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 q?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,109 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose q if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.