Both tools have similar popularity levels, with Grafana having 76,250 stars and Prometheus having 65,698 stars on GitHub. In terms of developer contributions, Grafana has 14,553 forks, indicating strong developer engagement.

Grafana is growing faster, adding 671 stars in the last 30 days (+0.9%) against adding 391 stars for Prometheus (+0.6%). Grafana is both larger and pulling further ahead.

Both projects show recent activity, with Grafana last updated 7 hours ago and Prometheus 21 hours ago.

Both tools share common technology foundations, being built with JavaScript, CSS, Bash, Typescript, JSX, Golang. However, they differ in their additional technology choices: Grafana uses Python, Ruby while Prometheus leverages SCSS.

Prometheus has been in development longer, starting 14 years ago, compared to Grafana which began 13 years ago. This 1.1-year head start suggests Prometheus may have more mature features and established processes.

The projects use different licenses: Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 while Prometheus uses Apache-2.0. Consider the licensing requirements when choosing for your project.

Both tools serve similar use cases in Infrastructure Monitoring. However, they also have distinct specializations: Grafana also focuses on Data Visualization, Performance Monitoring (APM) while Prometheus extends into Time Series Databases.

Both Grafana and Prometheus offer self-hosting capabilities, giving you full control over your data and infrastructure.