Dashy vs Grafana

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted apps from related categories — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
FeatureDashyGrafana
CategoryDashboards & StartpagesMonitoring & Status
LicenseMITAGPL-3.0
LanguageVueTypeScript
Setup difficultyEasyMedium
Min. RAM256 MB512 MB
Deploymentdockerdocker, bare-metal, helm
GitHub stars★ 26,140★ 76,153
First released20212014
ReplacesHeimdallDatadog

Why pick each one

Choose Dashy if…

  • Very feature-rich
  • Lots of themes
  • Built-in status checks
Dashy details

Choose Grafana if…

  • Beautiful flexible dashboards
  • Broad data source support
  • Strong community
Grafana details

Frequently asked questions

Is Dashy or Grafana better?

Neither is universally better. Grafana has the larger community, while Dashy is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are Dashy and Grafana free and open-source?

Yes. Dashy is licensed under MIT and Grafana under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Dashy and Grafana with Docker?

Dashy: yes. Grafana: yes.

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