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.
Graphite
Scalable real-time graphing and time series storage
VS
Kibana
Visualization and exploration for Elasticsearch data
| Feature | Graphite | Kibana |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 72 · Good | 96 · Excellent |
| 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 | ★ 6,119 | ★ 21,299 |
| First released | 2008 | 2013 |
| Replaces | Datadog | Splunk, Datadog |
What are Graphite and Kibana?
Graphite
Graphite is a monitoring tool that stores numeric time series data and renders graphs of it on demand. It consists of Carbon for metric ingestion, Whisper for storage, and a Django-based web app for visualization.
- Time series storage with Whisper
- On-demand graph rendering
- Plain-text metric protocol
- Widely supported by collectors
Kibana
Kibana is a visualization and management interface for Elasticsearch, widely used for log analytics and observability. It provides dashboards, search, and alerting over indexed operational data.
- Log and metric dashboards
- Discover search interface
- Alerting and machine learning
- Maps and visualizations
Graphite vs Kibana: key differences
Graphite is written in JavaScript, while Kibana is built with TypeScript. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for Graphite versus AGPL-3.0 for Kibana. Graphite is the lighter option, starting around 512 MB of RAM against 1,024 MB for Kibana. Graphite is the more established project (first released 2008), while Kibana arrived in 2013. Kibana has the considerably larger community, at 21,299 GitHub stars versus 6,119.
Why pick each one
Choose Graphite if…
- Simple metric protocol
- Mature and stable
Watch out for
- Dated architecture
- Scaling requires extra components
Choose Kibana if…
- Rich visualization options
- Mature ecosystem
Watch out for
- Tied to Elasticsearch
- Heavy resource usage
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.
Which is lighter on resources, Graphite or Kibana?
Graphite has the smaller minimum footprint at 512 MB of RAM, compared to about 1,024 MB for Kibana. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.