head to head · open source
Vector vs hubble
Vector has 22,589 GitHub stars, 2,286 forks, 2,512 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. hubble has 4,340 stars, 301 forks, 44 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Vector leads on adoption by 420% (22,589 vs 4,340 stars). Vector is written in Rust under MPL-2.0; hubble is written in Makefile under Apache-2.0. Vector has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, hubble 7%. 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 | hubble | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 4.3K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Makefile |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 301 |
| 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 hubble if
- You want the hubble feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Makefile
- You evaluated both and hubble 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 hubble
Hubble is fully distributed networking and security observability platform for cloud native workloads. It lives in Kubernetes ecosystem, built on Cilium and eBPF. It gives transparent visibility into service communication, service behavior, and networking infrastructure.
read the full hubble overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Vector or hubble more popular?
Vector has 22,589 GitHub stars and hubble has 4,340. Vector has the larger community by that measure.
Are Vector and hubble free?
Both are open source. Vector is licensed under MPL-2.0 and hubble under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Vector and hubble?
Vector is written in Rust and hubble in Makefile. 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 hubble?
Choose Vector if you want the larger community (22,589 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose hubble if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.