head to head · open source
Vector vs telemetry
Vector has 22,589 GitHub stars, 2,286 forks, 2,512 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. telemetry has 922 stars, 74 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped 29 days ago. Vector leads on adoption by 2,350% (22,589 vs 922 stars). Vector is written in Rust under MPL-2.0; telemetry is written in Erlang under Apache-2.0. Vector has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, telemetry 8%. Vector was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (events, 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 | telemetry | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 922 |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Erlang |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-08-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 74 |
| 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 telemetry if
- You want the telemetry feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Erlang
- You evaluated both and telemetry 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 telemetry
Telemetry is a lightweight Erlang and Elixir library for dynamic dispatching of events, aimed at library authors who need to emit instrumentation and at application developers who want to hook custom handlers onto those events.
read the full telemetry overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Vector or telemetry more popular?
Vector has 22,589 GitHub stars and telemetry has 922. Vector has the larger community by that measure.
Are Vector and telemetry free?
Both are open source. Vector is licensed under MPL-2.0 and telemetry under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Vector and telemetry?
Vector is written in Rust and telemetry in Erlang. 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 telemetry?
Choose Vector if you want the larger community (22,589 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose telemetry if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.