Graphite vs Kibana
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?
Graphite
Scalable real-time graphing and time series storage
VS
Kibana
Visualization and exploration for Elasticsearch data
| Feature | Graphite | Kibana |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal, source | docker, kubernetes, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 6,102 | ★ 21,230 |
| First released | 2008 | 2013 |
| Replaces | Datadog | Splunk, Datadog |
Why pick each one
Frequently asked questions
Is Graphite or Kibana better?
Neither is universally better. Kibana has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Graphite and Kibana free and open-source?
Yes. Graphite is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Kibana under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Graphite and Kibana with Docker?
Graphite: yes. Kibana: yes.