head to head · open source
Prometheus vs rqlite
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars, 10,969 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rqlite has 17,906 stars, 823 forks, 79 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Prometheus leads on adoption by 274% (66,906 vs 17,906 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; rqlite is written in Go under MIT. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, rqlite 5%. 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 | rqlite | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 18K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 823 |
| 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 rqlite if
- You want the rqlite feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and rqlite 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 rqlite
rqlite is a feature rich, rock solid, fault tolerant, distributed relational database built on SQLite. It's lightweight , developer friendly , and exceptionally easy to operate , offering effortless installation and deployment. Use rqlite to reliably store your most important data, ensuring it's always available to your applications think etcd, but with relational modeling available. Whether you're deploying resilient services in the cloud or reliable applications at the edge , rqlite provides a robust solution for critical data. Website · Slack Quick Start Check out the full Quick Start guide 1. Run a rqlite…
read the full rqlite overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or rqlite more popular?
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars and rqlite has 17,906. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and rqlite free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and rqlite under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and rqlite?
Prometheus is written in Go and rqlite 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 rqlite?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,906 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose rqlite if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.