head to head · open source
Uptime Kuma vs thanos
Uptime Kuma has 91,477 GitHub stars, 8,426 forks, 805 open issues and last shipped yesterday. thanos has 14,207 stars, 2,369 forks, 908 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Uptime Kuma leads on adoption by 544% (91,477 vs 14,207 stars). Uptime Kuma is written in JavaScript under MIT; thanos is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Uptime Kuma has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, thanos 17%. 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 | thanos | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 91K | ★ 14K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 2.4K |
| 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 thanos if
- You want the thanos 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 thanos 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 thanos
Thanos is a CNCF Incubating, Apache 2.0 licensed collection of Go components that composes a highly available metric system with unlimited storage capacity on top of an existing Prometheus deployment.
read the full thanos overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Uptime Kuma or thanos more popular?
Uptime Kuma has 91,477 GitHub stars and thanos has 14,207. Uptime Kuma has the larger community by that measure.
Are Uptime Kuma and thanos free?
Both are open source. Uptime Kuma is licensed under MIT and thanos under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Uptime Kuma and thanos?
Uptime Kuma is written in JavaScript and thanos 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 thanos?
Choose Uptime Kuma if you want the larger community (91,477 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose thanos if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.