head to head · open source
Prometheus vs TiDB
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars, 10,969 forks, 890 open issues and last shipped yesterday. TiDB has 40,701 stars, 6,284 forks, 6,976 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Prometheus leads on adoption by 64% (66,906 vs 40,701 stars). Prometheus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; TiDB is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Prometheus has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, TiDB 15%. TiDB was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (hacktoberfest), 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
| Prometheus | TiDB | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 41K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 6.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Prometheus if
- You weight community size — 67K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick TiDB if
- You want the TiDB feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and TiDB fits your workflow better
About Prometheus
Prometheus Visit prometheus.io for the full documentation, examples and guides. [ ][quay] [ ][hub] Prometheus, a Cloud Native Computing Foundation project, is a systems and service monitoring system. It collects metrics from configured targets at given intervals, evaluates rule expressions, displays the results, and can trigger alerts when specified conditions are observed. The features that distinguish Prometheus from other metrics and monitoring systems are: A multi dimensional data model (time series defined by metric name and set of key/value dimensions) PromQL, a powerful and flexible query language to…
read the full Prometheus overview →
About TiDB
TiDB TiDB (/’taɪdiːbi:/, "Ti" stands for Titanium) is an open source, cloud native, distributed SQL database designed for high availability, horizontal and vertical scalability, strong consistency, and high performance. Key Features Quick Start Need Help? Architecture Contributing License See Also Acknowledgments Key Features Distributed Transactions : TiDB uses a two phase commit protocol to ensure ACID compliance, providing strong consistency. Transactions span multiple nodes, and TiDB's distributed nature ensures data correctness even in the presence of network partitions or node failures. Horizontal and…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or TiDB more popular?
Prometheus has 66,906 GitHub stars and TiDB has 40,701. Prometheus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Prometheus and TiDB free?
Both are open source. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and TiDB under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Prometheus and TiDB?
Prometheus is written in Go and TiDB 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, Prometheus or TiDB?
Choose Prometheus if you want the larger community (66,906 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose TiDB if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.