head to head · open source
Prometheus vs QuestDB
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars, 10,969 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. QuestDB has 17,496 stars, 1,685 forks, 952 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Prometheus leads on adoption by 282% (66,906 vs 17,496 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; QuestDB is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, QuestDB 10%. 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 | QuestDB | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 17K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 1.7K |
| 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 QuestDB if
- You want the QuestDB feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and QuestDB 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 QuestDB
English 简体中文 QuestDB is the open source, low latency time series database on open formats. It ingests millions of events per second, computes on live data in milliseconds, and keeps years of history queryable. One SQL engine spans ingestion, stream processing, and tiered storage. The engine is zero GC Java with C++ and Rust on the hot paths. Data lives in memory mapped, time partitioned columns. Queries run across all cores with SIMD and JIT compiled filters. There are no third party dependencies on the data path. Storage is tiered: a parallel write ahead log, native columnar partitions, and Apache Parquet. In…
read the full QuestDB overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or QuestDB more popular?
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars and QuestDB has 17,496. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and QuestDB free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and QuestDB under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and QuestDB?
Prometheus is written in Go and QuestDB in Java. 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 QuestDB?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,906 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose QuestDB if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.