head to head · open source
Vector vs whisper
Vector has 22,589 GitHub stars, 2,286 forks, 2,512 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. whisper has 1,261 stars, 322 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. Vector leads on adoption by 1,691% (22,589 vs 1,261 stars). Vector is written in Rust under MPL-2.0; whisper is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Vector has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, whisper 26%. 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 | whisper | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 1.3K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2025-12-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 322 |
| 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 whisper if
- You want the whisper feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and whisper 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 whisper
Whisper is the file based time series database library at the storage layer of Graphite, built for operators and developers who need to record numeric metrics over time as plain files on disk rather than in a separate database server.
read the full whisper overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Vector or whisper more popular?
Vector has 22,589 GitHub stars and whisper has 1,261. Vector has the larger community by that measure.
Are Vector and whisper free?
Both are open source. Vector is licensed under MPL-2.0 and whisper under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Vector and whisper?
Vector is written in Rust and whisper in Python. 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 whisper?
Choose Vector if you want the larger community (22,589 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose whisper if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.