Grafana vs MySQL Server Exporter
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
Open observability dashboards and visualization
VS
MySQL Server Exporter
Official Prometheus exporter for MySQL and MariaDB
| Feature | Grafana | MySQL Server Exporter |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | TypeScript | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal, helm | docker, binary, kubernetes |
| GitHub stars | ★ 76,153 | ★ 2,460 |
| First released | 2014 | 2015 |
| Replaces | Datadog | Datadog MySQL, VividCortex |
Why pick each one
Choose Grafana if…
- Beautiful flexible dashboards
- Broad data source support
- Strong community
Choose MySQL Server Exporter if…
- Reliable and well-tested
- Granular collector toggles
Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or MySQL Server Exporter better?
Neither is universally better. Grafana has the larger community, while MySQL Server Exporter is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Grafana and MySQL Server Exporter free and open-source?
Yes. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and MySQL Server Exporter under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Grafana and MySQL Server Exporter with Docker?
Grafana: yes. MySQL Server Exporter: yes.