head to head · open source
beszel vs telegraf
beszel has 26,783 GitHub stars, 1,138 forks, 313 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. telegraf has 17,893 stars, 5,846 forks, 449 open issues and last shipped yesterday. beszel leads on adoption by 50% (26,783 vs 17,893 stars). beszel is written in Go under MIT; telegraf is written in Go under MIT. beszel has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, telegraf 33%. telegraf was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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
| beszel | telegraf | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 18K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 5.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick beszel if
- You weight community size — 27K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick telegraf if
- You want the telegraf feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and telegraf fits your workflow better
About beszel
Beszel Beszel is a lightweight server monitoring platform that includes Docker statistics, historical data, and alert functions. It has a friendly web interface, simple configuration, and is ready to use out of the box. It supports automatic backup, multi user, OAuth authentication, and API access. Features Lightweight : Smaller and less resource intensive than leading solutions. Simple : Easy setup with little manual configuration required. Docker stats : Tracks CPU, memory, and network usage history for each container. ZFS : Tracks pool capacity, health, and I/O, plus per dataset usage. Alerts : Configurable…
read the full beszel overview →
About telegraf
Telegraf Telegraf is an agent for collecting, processing, aggregating, and writing metrics, logs, and other arbitrary data. Offers a comprehensive suite of over 300 plugins, covering a wide range of functionalities including system monitoring, cloud services, and message passing Enables the integration of user defined code to collect, transform, and transmit data efficiently Compiles into a standalone static binary without any external dependencies, ensuring a streamlined deployment process Utilizes TOML for configuration, providing a user friendly and unambiguous setup experience Developed with contributions…
read the full telegraf overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is beszel or telegraf more popular?
beszel has 26,783 GitHub stars and telegraf has 17,893. beszel has the larger community by that measure.
Are beszel and telegraf free?
Both are open source. beszel is licensed under MIT and telegraf under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between beszel and telegraf?
beszel is written in Go and telegraf 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, beszel or telegraf?
Choose beszel if you want the larger community (26,783 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose telegraf if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.