head to head · open source
Prometheus vs tbls
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars, 10,839 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. tbls has 4,344 stars, 210 forks, 55 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Prometheus leads on adoption by 1,422% (66,109 vs 4,344 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; tbls is written in Go under MIT. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, tbls 5%. tbls was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (hacktoberfest), 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 | tbls | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 66K | ★ 4.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 210 |
| 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 tbls if
- You want the tbls feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and tbls 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 tbls
tbls is an MIT licensed, Go written command line tool that automatically documents a database schema as Markdown and other formats, aimed at developers, data engineers, and platform teams who want schema documentation generated, diffed, and linted inside continuous integration instead of maintained by hand.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or tbls more popular?
Prometheus has 66,109 GitHub stars and tbls has 4,344. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and tbls free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and tbls under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and tbls?
Prometheus is written in Go and tbls 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 tbls?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,109 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose tbls if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.