head to head · open source
Grafana vs telegraf
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. telegraf has 17,893 stars, 5,846 forks, 449 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 334% (77,638 vs 17,893 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; telegraf is written in Go under MIT. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, telegraf 33%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (hacktoberfest, influxdb, 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 | telegraf | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 18K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 5.8K |
| 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 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 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 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 Grafana or telegraf more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and telegraf has 17,893. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and telegraf free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and telegraf under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and telegraf?
Grafana is written in TypeScript 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, Grafana or telegraf?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose telegraf if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.