head to head · open source
Prometheus vs zookeeper
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars, 10,969 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zookeeper has 12,829 stars, 7,326 forks, 242 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Prometheus leads on adoption by 422% (66,906 vs 12,829 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; zookeeper is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, zookeeper 57%. Prometheus 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 | zookeeper | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 13K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 7.3K |
| 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 zookeeper if
- You want the zookeeper 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 zookeeper 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 zookeeper
Apache ZooKeeper [![GitHub Actions CI][ciBadge]][ciLink] [![Travis CI][trBadge]][trLink] [![Maven Central][mcBadge]][mcLink] [![License][liBadge]][liLink] For the latest information about Apache ZooKeeper, please visit our website at: and our wiki, at: Packaging/release artifacts Either downloaded from or found in zookeeper assembly/target directory after building the project with maven. apache zookeeper [version].tar.gz Contains all the source files which can be built by running: mvn clean install To generate an aggregated apidocs for zookeeper server and zookeeper jute: mvn javadoc:aggregate (generated files…
read the full zookeeper overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or zookeeper more popular?
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars and zookeeper has 12,829. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and zookeeper free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and zookeeper under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and zookeeper?
Prometheus is written in Go and zookeeper 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 zookeeper?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,906 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose zookeeper if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.