head to head · open source
worldmonitor vs retina
worldmonitor has 86,752 GitHub stars, 13,161 forks, 313 open issues and last shipped today. retina has 3,173 stars, 304 forks, 190 open issues and last shipped yesterday. worldmonitor leads on adoption by 2,634% (86,752 vs 3,173 stars). worldmonitor is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; retina is written in Go under MIT. worldmonitor has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, retina 10%. worldmonitor was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| worldmonitor | retina | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 87K | ★ 3.2K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 13K | ⑂ 304 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick worldmonitor if
- You weight community size — 87K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick retina if
- You want the retina feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and retina fits your workflow better
About worldmonitor
World Monitor is an open source, real time global intelligence dashboard in TypeScript that aggregates news with AI, monitors geopolitics and infrastructure, and unifies all of it into a single situational awareness interface for analysts, journalists, researchers, and operations teams who need cross domain awareness they can self host.
read the full worldmonitor overview →
About retina
[![goreport][goreport img]][goreport] ![GitHub release][release img] [![retina publish][godoc badge]][godoc] ![license] [![retina test][retina test image badge]][retina test image] [![retinash][retinash badge]][retinash] [![retina publish][retina publish badge]][retina publish] ![retina codeql img][retina codeql badge] ![retina golangci lint img][retina golangci lint badge] Overview Retina is a cloud agnostic, open source Kubernetes network observability platform that provides a centralized hub for monitoring application health, network health, and security . It provides actionable insights to cluster network adm…
read the full retina overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is worldmonitor or retina more popular?
worldmonitor has 86,752 GitHub stars and retina has 3,173. worldmonitor has the larger community by that measure.
Are worldmonitor and retina free?
Both are open source. worldmonitor is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and retina under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between worldmonitor and retina?
worldmonitor is written in TypeScript and retina 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, worldmonitor or retina?
Choose worldmonitor if you want the larger community (86,752 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose retina if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.