head to head · open source
Prometheus vs SigNoz
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars, 10,839 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. SigNoz has 32,120 stars, 2,494 forks, 1,557 open issues and last shipped today. Prometheus leads on adoption by 106% (66,109 vs 32,120 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; SigNoz is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, SigNoz 8%. SigNoz was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (metrics, monitoring), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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 | SigNoz | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 66K | ★ 32K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 2.5K |
| 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 SigNoz if
- You want the SigNoz feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and SigNoz 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 SigNoz
SigNoz is an open source, OpenTelemetry native observability platform for cloud native applications. It unifies logs, metrics, traces, alerts, and dashboards into a single tool, replacing fragmented monitoring stacks with a correlated signal pipeline. It lives in the observability ecosystem alongside tools like Prometheus, Jaeger, and Grafana, and is positioned as an open alternative to Datadog.
read the full SigNoz overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or SigNoz more popular?
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars and SigNoz has 32,120. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and SigNoz free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0, and SigNoz has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Prometheus and SigNoz?
Prometheus is written in Go and SigNoz in TypeScript. 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 SigNoz?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,109 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose SigNoz if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.