Grafana vs Plausible

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted apps from related categories — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
FeatureGrafanaPlausible
CategoryMonitoring & StatusWeb Analytics
LicenseAGPL-3.0AGPL-3.0
LanguageTypeScriptElixir
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM512 MB1,024 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, helmdocker
GitHub stars★ 76,153★ 28,416
First released20142019
ReplacesDatadogGoogle Analytics

Why pick each one

Choose Grafana if…

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

Choose Plausible if…

  • Privacy-friendly by design
  • Simple and fast
  • Lightweight script
Plausible details

Frequently asked questions

Is Grafana or Plausible 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 Plausible free and open-source?

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

Can I run Grafana and Plausible with Docker?

Grafana: yes. Plausible: yes.

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