head to head · open source
Grafana vs SigNoz
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. SigNoz has 32,509 stars, 2,573 forks, 1,557 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 139% (77,638 vs 32,509 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%. Grafana 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 | ★ 78K | ★ 33K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 2.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Grafana if
- You weight community size — 78K 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
The open source platform for monitoring and observability Grafana allows you to query, visualize, alert on and understand your metrics no matter where they are stored. Create, explore, and share dashboards with your team and foster a data driven culture: Visualizations: Fast and flexible client side graphs with a multitude of options. Panel plugins offer many different ways to visualize metrics and logs. Dynamic Dashboards: Create dynamic & reusable dashboards with template variables that appear as dropdowns at the top of the dashboard. Explore Metrics: Explore your data through ad hoc queries and dynamic…
read the full Grafana overview →
About SigNoz
中文 · Deutsch · Português SigNoz is an open source observability platform built on OpenTelemetry. We’re building an enterprise grade alternative to fragmented monitoring stacks, with logs, metrics, traces, alerts, and dashboards in one place. Choose how to run SigNoz SigNoz Cloud (Recommended) Fully managed SigNoz with a 30 day free trial, no credit card required, usage based pricing that starts at $49, and regional data hosting. Start free → Enterprise Enterprise Cloud, BYOC, or Enterprise Self Hosted with compliance, support, custom retention, RBAC, ingestion controls, data residency, and region selection…
read the full SigNoz overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or SigNoz more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and SigNoz has 32,509. 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 (77,638 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.