Grafana vs Perses

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

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FeatureGrafanaPerses
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseAGPL-3.0Apache-2.0
LanguageTypeScriptGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM512 MB256 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, helmdocker, kubernetes, binary
GitHub stars★ 76,153★ 2,338
First released20142022
ReplacesDatadogGrafana

Why pick each one

Choose Grafana if…

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

Choose Perses if…

  • Version-controlled dashboards
  • Truly open governance
Perses details

Frequently asked questions

Is Grafana or Perses 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 Perses free and open-source?

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

Can I run Grafana and Perses with Docker?

Grafana: yes. Perses: yes.

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