GoAccess vs Grafana

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
FeatureGoAccessGrafana
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseMITAGPL-3.0
LanguageCTypeScript
Setup difficultyEasyMedium
Min. RAM64 MB512 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, binarydocker, bare-metal, helm
GitHub stars★ 20,762★ 76,153
First released20102014
ReplacesGoogle AnalyticsDatadog

Why pick each one

Choose GoAccess if…

  • Extremely fast and lightweight
  • Works fully offline
GoAccess details

Choose Grafana if…

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

Frequently asked questions

Is GoAccess or Grafana better?

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

Are GoAccess and Grafana free and open-source?

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

Can I run GoAccess and Grafana with Docker?

GoAccess: yes. Grafana: yes.

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