head to head · open source
Vector vs ktop
Vector has 22,589 GitHub stars, 2,286 forks, 2,512 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. ktop has 1,109 stars, 25 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. Vector leads on adoption by 1,937% (22,589 vs 1,109 stars). Vector is written in Rust under MPL-2.0; ktop is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Vector has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, ktop 2%. 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 | ktop | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-07-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 25 |
| 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 ktop if
- You want the ktop 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 ktop 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 ktop
ktop is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Go based terminal tool that shows live metrics for nodes, pods, and containers in a Kubernetes cluster, built for operators and developers who want top style cluster visibility without installing anything inside the cluster.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Vector or ktop more popular?
Vector has 22,589 GitHub stars and ktop has 1,109. Vector has the larger community by that measure.
Are Vector and ktop free?
Both are open source. Vector is licensed under MPL-2.0 and ktop under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Vector and ktop?
Vector is written in Rust and ktop 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, Vector or ktop?
Choose Vector if you want the larger community (22,589 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose ktop if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.