head to head · open source
Uptime Kuma vs grafana-operator
Uptime Kuma has 91,498 GitHub stars, 8,431 forks, 805 open issues and last shipped yesterday. grafana-operator has 1,387 stars, 471 forks, 54 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Uptime Kuma leads on adoption by 6,497% (91,498 vs 1,387 stars). Uptime Kuma is written in JavaScript under MIT; grafana-operator is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Uptime Kuma has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, grafana-operator 34%. Uptime Kuma 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
| Uptime Kuma | grafana-operator | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 91K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 471 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Uptime Kuma if
- You weight community size — 91K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick grafana-operator if
- You want the grafana-operator 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 grafana-operator fits your workflow better
About Uptime Kuma
Uptime Kuma is a free, MIT licensed, self hosted monitoring tool with a reactive web dashboard, built for operators and teams that want to watch their own HTTP, TCP, and DNS endpoints and keep the resulting data on their own infrastructure.
read the full Uptime Kuma overview →
About grafana-operator
Grafana Operator is a Go based, Apache 2.0 licensed Kubernetes operator that installs and manages Grafana instances, dashboards and data sources through Kubernetes and OpenShift custom resources, built for platform and observability teams that already run those clusters and want Grafana managed as code.
read the full grafana-operator overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Uptime Kuma or grafana-operator more popular?
Uptime Kuma has 91,498 GitHub stars and grafana-operator has 1,387. Uptime Kuma has the larger community by that measure.
Are Uptime Kuma and grafana-operator free?
Both are open source. Uptime Kuma is licensed under MIT and grafana-operator under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Uptime Kuma and grafana-operator?
Uptime Kuma is written in JavaScript and grafana-operator 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, Uptime Kuma or grafana-operator?
Choose Uptime Kuma if you want the larger community (91,498 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose grafana-operator if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.