head to head · open source
Trench vs Operational
Trench has 1,663 GitHub stars, 64 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. Operational has 477 stars, 17 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Trench leads on adoption by 249% (1,663 vs 477 stars). Trench is written in TypeScript under MIT; Operational is written in Vue under AGPL-3.0. Trench has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, Operational 4%. Operational was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Trench | Operational | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 1.7K | ★ 477 |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Vue |
| Last push | 2026-04-06 | 2026-07-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 64 | ⑂ 17 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Trench if
- You weight community size — 1.7K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Operational if
- You want the Operational feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Vue
- You evaluated both and Operational fits your workflow better
About Trench
Trench is an open source analytics infrastructure project written in TypeScript under the MIT license. It is built around Apache Kafka, ClickHouse, and a Node.js based service, and it is distributed as a single production ready Docker image for event tracking. The project sits in the open source event streaming and analytics ecosystem, where teams collect product events, query them quickly, and connect data to dashboards, LLM retrieval pipelines, observability tools, or other analytics products.
read the full Trench overview →
About Operational
Operational is an open source event tracking and notification tool for technology products. It lives in the Node.js ecosystem and is distributed as a monorepo containing a Vue 3 single page application, an Express backend, an Astro marketing website, and a shared packages folder published to npm. The runtime stack is Node.js 18 or newer, MySQL 8.x, and Prisma as the data layer, with ClickHouse supported as an optional addition. The project is licensed under AGPL 3.0 and its topics list places it in the self hosted, SaaS, PWA, and push notification space.
read the full Operational overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Trench or Operational more popular?
Trench has 1,663 GitHub stars and Operational has 477. Trench has the larger community by that measure.
Are Trench and Operational free?
Both are open source. Trench is licensed under MIT and Operational under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Trench and Operational?
Trench is written in TypeScript and Operational in Vue. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Trench or Operational?
Choose Trench if you want the larger community (1,663 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Operational if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.