Grafana vs Munin

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?
FeatureGrafanaMunin
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseAGPL-3.0GPL-2.0
LanguageTypeScriptPerl
Setup difficultyMediumEasy
Min. RAM512 MB128 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, helmbare-metal, source
GitHub stars★ 76,153★ 2,136
First released20142004
ReplacesDatadogDatadog

Why pick each one

Choose Grafana if…

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

Choose Munin if…

  • Very easy to get started
  • Large library of plugins
Munin details

Frequently asked questions

Is Grafana or Munin better?

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

Are Grafana and Munin free and open-source?

Yes. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Munin under GPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Grafana and Munin with Docker?

Grafana: yes. Munin: check the project docs for container support.

Related comparisons