head to head · open source
Prometheus vs risingwave
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars, 10,839 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. risingwave has 9,330 stars, 838 forks, 1,687 open issues and last shipped today. Prometheus leads on adoption by 609% (66,109 vs 9,330 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; risingwave is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, risingwave 9%. risingwave 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 | risingwave | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 66K | ★ 9.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 838 |
| 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 risingwave if
- You want the risingwave 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 risingwave 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 risingwave
RisingWave is an Apache 2.0, Rust written event streaming platform for agentic AI that continuously ingests data from databases, event streams and webhooks, processes it incrementally, and serves fresh results at low latency, and it is aimed at teams building agents, real time applications and streaming data pipelines that need always current, queryable data.
read the full risingwave overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or risingwave more popular?
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars and risingwave has 9,330. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and risingwave free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and risingwave under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and risingwave?
Prometheus is written in Go and risingwave 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 risingwave?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,109 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose risingwave if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.