M3 vs Zeppelin
M3 and Zeppelin are both database software. M3 is open source under Apache-2.0, with 4.9k GitHub stars. Zeppelin is open source under Apache-2.0, with 6.7k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick M3 when
- You run Prometheus at very large scale and need horizontally scalable long-term metrics storage.
- Pick Zeppelin when
- Your team works mainly with Spark or Flink and wants shared notebooks tied to those engines.
Side by side
Uber's metrics platform: a distributed time-series database, aggregator and query engine usable as long-term Prometheus storage and Graphite-compatible backend.
A web-based notebook for interactive data analytics with SQL, Scala, Python and Spark, producing shareable charts and documents.
Complex to operate, and development has slowed; many teams choose Thanos, Mimir or VictoriaMetrics instead.
Jupyter has far more momentum, and Zeppelin's releases and community have slowed.
Usable (both)
Self-hosted server (both)
Go and etcd
Java, TypeScript and Spark
Open source, Apache-2.0 (permissive) (both)
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice. (both)
4.9k GitHub stars
6.7k GitHub stars
Established: started 10 years ago, latest release v1.6.0.
Established: started 11 years ago, no tagged release yet.
Other comparisons
More databases
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from each project's README and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.