Grafana vs Grafana k6

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?
FeatureGrafanaGrafana k6
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseAGPL-3.0AGPL-3.0
LanguageTypeScriptGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM512 MB256 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, helmdocker, binary, bare-metal
GitHub stars★ 76,153★ 31,211
First released20142017
ReplacesDatadogLoadRunner, BlazeMeter

Why pick each one

Choose Grafana if…

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

Choose Grafana k6 if…

  • Developer-friendly scripting
  • Great CI integration
Grafana k6 details

Frequently asked questions

Is Grafana or Grafana k6 better?

Neither is universally better. Grafana has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are Grafana and Grafana k6 free and open-source?

Yes. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Grafana k6 under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Grafana and Grafana k6 with Docker?

Grafana: yes. Grafana k6: yes.

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