head to head · open source
Prometheus vs Qdrant
Prometheus has 66,106 GitHub stars, 10,840 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Qdrant has 34,638 stars, 2,680 forks, 704 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Prometheus leads on adoption by 91% (66,106 vs 34,638 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Qdrant is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, Qdrant 8%. Qdrant 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 | Qdrant | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 66K | ★ 35K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 2.7K |
| 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 Qdrant if
- You want the Qdrant 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 Qdrant 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 Qdrant
Qdrant is a vector similarity search engine and database built in Rust, designed for production use in AI applications. It stores, manages, and retrieves high dimensional vectors alongside associated metadata (payloads), supporting fast nearest neighbor search with filtering. It solves the problem of efficiently performing semantic or neural based matching at scale—such as finding similar images, recommending content, or powering retrieval augmented generation (RAG)—by replacing slow or inflexible brute force or index based approaches with a purpose built engine optimized for vector operations.…
read the full Qdrant overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or Qdrant more popular?
Prometheus has 66,106 GitHub stars and Qdrant has 34,638. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and Qdrant free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Qdrant under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and Qdrant?
Prometheus is written in Go and Qdrant 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 Qdrant?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,106 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Qdrant if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.