Grafana OnCall vs Apache SkyWalking
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?
Grafana OnCall
Open-source on-call management and incident escalation
VS
Apache SkyWalking
APM and observability for cloud-native architectures
| Feature | Grafana OnCall | Apache SkyWalking |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Python | Java |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 2,048 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, helm | docker, kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 3,889 | ★ 24,915 |
| First released | 2021 | 2015 |
| Replaces | PagerDuty, Opsgenie | New Relic, Datadog |
Why pick each one
Choose Apache SkyWalking if…
- Full observability suite
- Strong Apache governance
Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana OnCall or Apache SkyWalking better?
Neither is universally better. Apache SkyWalking has the larger community, while Grafana OnCall is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Grafana OnCall and Apache SkyWalking free and open-source?
Yes. Grafana OnCall is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Apache SkyWalking under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Grafana OnCall and Apache SkyWalking with Docker?
Grafana OnCall: yes. Apache SkyWalking: yes.