head to head · open source
Vector vs grimoirelab
Vector has 22,589 GitHub stars, 2,286 forks, 2,512 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. grimoirelab has 626 stars, 231 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Vector leads on adoption by 3,508% (22,589 vs 626 stars). Vector is written in Rust under MPL-2.0; grimoirelab is written in Shell under GPL-3.0. Vector has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, grimoirelab 37%. Vector was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (metrics), 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
| Vector | grimoirelab | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 626 |
| License | MPL-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Shell |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 231 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Vector if
- You weight community size — 23K stars and counting
- You want the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick grimoirelab if
- You want the grimoirelab feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You evaluated both and grimoirelab fits your workflow better
About Vector
Vector is an open source observability data pipeline written in Rust and licensed under MPL 2.0. It operates as an end to end system for collecting, transforming, and routing logs and metrics within the cloud native monitoring ecosystem. The project is maintained by Datadog's Community Open Source Engineering team, and its topics include agent, cloud native, data transformation, datadog, etl, events, forwarder, logs, metrics, and monitoring.
read the full Vector overview →
About grimoirelab
GrimoireLab is a GPL 3.0 licensed CHAOSS toolset for software development analytics that retrieves data from the systems used to support software development, stores it in databases, enriches it by computing metrics, and makes it available for analytics and visualization, aimed at the people who need to measure development activity rather than guess at it.
read the full grimoirelab overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Vector or grimoirelab more popular?
Vector has 22,589 GitHub stars and grimoirelab has 626. Vector has the larger community by that measure.
Are Vector and grimoirelab free?
Both are open source. Vector is licensed under MPL-2.0 and grimoirelab under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Vector and grimoirelab?
Vector is written in Rust and grimoirelab in Shell. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Vector or grimoirelab?
Choose Vector if you want the larger community (22,589 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose grimoirelab if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.