head to head · open source
Grafana vs SigNoz
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars, 14,749 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. SigNoz has 32,116 stars, 2,493 forks, 1,557 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 139% (76,791 vs 32,116 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; SigNoz is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence. Grafana has attracted 19% 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 3 topic tags (go, 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
| Grafana | SigNoz | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 32K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 2.5K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Grafana if
- You weight community size — 77K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- 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 Grafana
Grafana is an open source observability platform for visualizing metrics, logs, and traces across diverse data sources. It runs in the infrastructure and operations ecosystem, designed for teams needing unified visibility into system behavior without vendor lock in. Built with TypeScript and Go, it provides a composable architecture that integrates with existing toolchains.
read the full Grafana 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 Grafana or SigNoz more popular?
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars and SigNoz has 32,116. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and SigNoz free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0, and SigNoz has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Grafana and SigNoz?
Grafana is written in TypeScript 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, Grafana or SigNoz?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,791 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose SigNoz if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.