Grafana vs OpenSearch

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?
FeatureGrafanaOpenSearch
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseAGPL-3.0Apache-2.0
LanguageTypeScriptJava
Setup difficultyMediumHard
Min. RAM512 MB2,048 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, helmdocker, kubernetes, helm
GitHub stars★ 76,153★ 13,480
First released20142021
ReplacesDatadogElasticsearch, Splunk

Why pick each one

Choose Grafana if…

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

Choose OpenSearch if…

  • Truly open-source license
  • Rich analytics features
OpenSearch details

Frequently asked questions

Is Grafana or OpenSearch better?

Grafana is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler medium setup. Consider OpenSearch if its specific feature set fits your needs better.

Are Grafana and OpenSearch free and open-source?

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

Can I run Grafana and OpenSearch with Docker?

Grafana: yes. OpenSearch: yes.

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