head to head · open source
worldmonitor vs thanos
worldmonitor has 86,684 GitHub stars, 13,147 forks, 313 open issues and last shipped yesterday. thanos has 14,207 stars, 2,369 forks, 908 open issues and last shipped yesterday. worldmonitor leads on adoption by 510% (86,684 vs 14,207 stars). worldmonitor is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; thanos is written in Go under Apache-2.0. worldmonitor has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, thanos 17%. worldmonitor was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (monitoring), 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
| worldmonitor | thanos | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 87K | ★ 14K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 13K | ⑂ 2.4K |
| 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 thanos if
- You want the thanos 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 thanos 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 thanos
Thanos is a CNCF Incubating, Apache 2.0 licensed collection of Go components that composes a highly available metric system with unlimited storage capacity on top of an existing Prometheus deployment.
read the full thanos overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is worldmonitor or thanos more popular?
worldmonitor has 86,684 GitHub stars and thanos has 14,207. worldmonitor has the larger community by that measure.
Are worldmonitor and thanos free?
Both are open source. worldmonitor is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and thanos under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between worldmonitor and thanos?
worldmonitor is written in TypeScript and thanos 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 thanos?
Choose worldmonitor if you want the larger community (86,684 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose thanos if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.