greptimedb - Real-time & cloud-native observability database for metrics, logs, and traces.

Metrics, logs, and traces.
One engine, on your infrastructure.

A columnar database for metrics, logs, and traces on object storage. Apache-2.0 licensed core.

User Guide | API Docs | Roadmap 2026

_{stable for production · canary includes pre-releases · nightly is a weekly snapshot of main}

Introduction
Why You Might Use It
Overview
What's Supported
Compatibility and Migration
Limitations and Edition Boundary
Architecture
Try GreptimeDB
Getting Started
Build From Source
Tools & Extensions
Project Status
Community
License
Commercial Support
Contributing
Acknowledgement

Introduction

GreptimeDB is an open-source observability database. Metrics, logs, and traces run on one columnar engine over object storage and share one table model: tags, timestamp, and fields. When signals carry common identifiers such as service, host, or trace ID, you can correlate them in SQL without moving data between databases.

Ingest through OpenTelemetry, Prometheus Remote Write, Loki Push, or Elasticsearch Bulk. Use SQL across observability data and PromQL for metrics. Migrate ingestion one signal at a time without rebuilding your collectors.

Why You Might Use It

You run Prometheus plus Loki or Elasticsearch and want one backend instead of three
You have outgrown Prometheus on cardinality or retention and don't want the Thanos/Mimir operational surface
You need long retention on object storage without a separate analytics stack
You want to query telemetry with SQL, not only a domain query language
You are storing GenAI or agent telemetry (OTel GenAI conventions) alongside infrastructure signals
You need the same engine and semantics on resource-constrained devices

Learn more in Why GreptimeDB.

Overview

A quick overview of what GreptimeDB ingests, how it connects to other systems, and what its distributed engine lets you do.

What's Supported


Ingest	OpenTelemetry (OTLP), Prometheus Remote Write, Loki Push, Elasticsearch Bulk, InfluxDB line protocol, gRPC
Query	SQL, PromQL, Jaeger-compatible trace queries, MySQL and PostgreSQL wire protocols
Storage	S3, GCS, Azure Blob and S3-compatible endpoints as primary storage, with memory and local-disk caches
Built in	Retention policies, downsampling, continuous aggregation, explicit table partitioning, and inverted / skipping / fulltext indexes

Compute and storage are disaggregated: object storage holds the data, while memory and local-disk caches keep recent and frequently queried data close to compute.

Compatibility and Migration

Compatibility is per protocol, and query-side coverage is narrower than ingestion.

	Compatible	Not compatible
Prometheus	Remote Write ingestion; PromQL queries	Gaps are listed in PromQL compatibility
Loki	Push ingestion; dual-write through Grafana Alloy makes the cutover gradual	LogQL and the rest of the Loki query API
Elasticsearch	`_bulk` ingestion in the open-source core; QueryDSL partially, in Enterprise	Most other Elasticsearch APIs

Benchmarks:

Limitations and Edition Boundary

Cluster deployment, object storage, the Flow engine, and every ingestion protocol listed above are in the Apache-2.0 build. Repartitioning, region migration, and index creation are manual operations there.

Read replicas, workload isolation, and automated repartitioning are GreptimeDB Enterprise features, along with enterprise security and governance. The Enterprise overview has the current list, and pricing has the edition comparison.

Architecture

GreptimeDB can run in two modes:

Standalone — single binary for development and small deployments.
Distributed — four components, each independently scalable:
- Frontend — protocol entry (OTel, Prometheus, MySQL/PostgreSQL, gRPC, ingestion APIs for Elasticsearch/InfluxDB/Loki) and the distributed query engine. Stateless, scales horizontally.
- Datanode — region engine with WAL, memtable, SST, cache, compaction, and indexes. Persists data to object storage. Elastic.
- Metasrv — metadata, routing, repartitioning, and security. Backed by a pluggable KV layer (etcd or RDS).
- Flownode (optional) — continuous flow computation (streaming and materialized views).

For deeper coverage, see the architecture doc or DeepWiki.

Try GreptimeDB

For AI agents — paste this prompt into your agent:

Read https://docs.greptime.com/SKILL.md and follow the instructions
to deploy, configure, ingest, and query GreptimeDB.

docker run -p 127.0.0.1:4000-4003:4000-4003 \
  -v "$(pwd)/greptimedb_data:/greptimedb_data" \
  --name greptime --rm \
  greptime/greptimedb:latest standalone start \
  --http-addr 0.0.0.0:4000 \
  --grpc-bind-addr 0.0.0.0:4001 \
  --mysql-addr 0.0.0.0:4002 \
  --postgres-addr 0.0.0.0:4003

Dashboard: http://localhost:4000/dashboard

Getting Started

Build From Source

Prerequisites:

Rust toolchain — nightly, pinned by rust-toolchain.toml
Protobuf compiler (>= 3.15)
C/C++ building essentials: gcc / g++ / autoconf and the glibc dev package (libc6-dev on Ubuntu, glibc-devel on Fedora)
Python toolchain (optional, only for some test scripts)

Build and run:

make                          # build greptime binary
cargo run -- standalone start # start in standalone mode

Common dev commands:

make fmt            # format Rust code
make clippy         # lint (fails on warnings)
make test           # unit + integration tests (uses cargo-nextest)
make sqlness-test   # SQL regression tests

See the Contribution Guidelines for the full developer workflow.

Tools & Extensions

Kubernetes: GreptimeDB Operator
Helm Charts: Greptime Helm Charts
Dashboard: Web UI
gRPC Ingester: Go, Java, C++, Erlang, Rust, .NET, TypeScript
Grafana Data Source: GreptimeDB Grafana data source plugin
Grafana Dashboard: Official Dashboard for monitoring

Project Status

GreptimeDB is generally available, with stable APIs and regular releases. It runs in production at scale — OceanBase Cloud operates 80+ GreptimeDB clusters managing 300 TB of logs, cutting log storage cost by 60%+ after migrating from Grafana Loki. See more in case studies.

Read the v1.0 highlights and 2026 roadmap, or browse the version reference.

If GreptimeDB is useful to you, please star the repo.

Community

We invite you to engage and contribute!

License

GreptimeDB is an open-core project. Its core is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

A small set of peripheral, enterprise-only features are gated behind the enterprise Cargo feature (not built by default) and are governed by the separate GreptimeDB Enterprise License. Source files under that license carry an explicit Enterprise License header.

Commercial Support

Scaling observability on your infrastructure? GreptimeDB Enterprise adds the operational, security, and support layer for production deployments. Contact us for details.

Contributing

Read our Contribution Guidelines.
Explore Internal Concepts and DeepWiki.
Pick up a good first issue and join the #contributors Slack channel.

Acknowledgement

Special thanks to all contributors! See AUTHOR.md.

Uses Apache Arrow™ (memory model)
Apache Parquet™ (file storage)
Apache DataFusion™ (query engine)
Apache OpenDAL™ (data access abstraction)

All trademarks, logos, and brand names referenced in this README and in the Overview diagram are the property of their respective owners. Their use is for identification purposes only and does not imply endorsement or affiliation.

Metrics, logs, and traces. One engine, on your infrastructure.