head to head · open source
SigNoz vs retina
SigNoz has 32,525 GitHub stars, 2,576 forks, 1,557 open issues and last shipped yesterday. retina has 3,185 stars, 308 forks, 190 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. SigNoz leads on adoption by 921% (32,525 vs 3,185 stars). SigNoz is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; retina is written in Go under MIT. SigNoz has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, retina 10%. SigNoz was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (observability), 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
| SigNoz | retina | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 3.2K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 308 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick SigNoz if
- You weight community size — 33K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick retina if
- You want the retina feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and retina fits your workflow better
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 →
About retina
[![goreport][goreport img]][goreport] ![GitHub release][release img] [![retina publish][godoc badge]][godoc] ![license] [![retina test][retina test image badge]][retina test image] [![retinash][retinash badge]][retinash] [![retina publish][retina publish badge]][retina publish] ![retina codeql img][retina codeql badge] ![retina golangci lint img][retina golangci lint badge] Overview Retina is a cloud agnostic, open source Kubernetes network observability platform that provides a centralized hub for monitoring application health, network health, and security . It provides actionable insights to cluster network…
read the full retina overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is SigNoz or retina more popular?
SigNoz has 32,525 GitHub stars and retina has 3,185. SigNoz has the larger community by that measure.
Are SigNoz and retina free?
Both are open source. SigNoz has no licence declared in this registry, and retina is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between SigNoz and retina?
SigNoz is written in TypeScript and retina 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, SigNoz or retina?
Choose SigNoz if you want the larger community (32,525 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose retina if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.