Apache DevLake alternative
DevLake gives you a database. You still need the product.
Apache DevLake is a serious, free, Apache-2.0 data platform — and the choice to respect if you have engineers who want to own schemas, SQL and Grafana panels. Deckgauge is what you install when the consumer of the metrics is a VP running a meeting, not an engineer writing a query.
SELF-HOSTED · FREE AND UNCAPPED CORE · NO SQL BETWEEN YOU AND THE ANSWER
Warehouse and panels, or product and board.
| Apache DevLake | Deckgauge | |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | Collectors into a database + Grafana | A board, dashboards, rankings, roadmaps, workload — a product |
| Who configures it | An engineer who knows SQL and Grafana | Whoever runs the meeting — defaults work on first sync |
| Access control | None of its own — the database is the boundary | Keycloak OIDC, board-level OWNER/EDITOR/VIEWER roles |
| The board itself | No — dashboards only | Monday-style board over all sources; the meeting runs on it |
| CapEx/OpEx | Build it in SQL | Derived from tracker history, no timesheets, contestable ledger |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | FSL-1.1-ALv2 — free at any size, converts to Apache-2.0 in 2028 |
| Price | Free | Core free; hosted/commercial from $600 / month |
Two reasonable conclusions, depending on your team.
Choose DevLake if your platform team wants a dev-data warehouse as infrastructure — they will write the SQL, own the panels, and like it. It is a Top-Level Apache project with an active community, and paying nothing for it is a perfectly good outcome.
Choose Deckgauge if the person who needs the answer is an engineering leader with twenty minutes before a meeting — and nobody on your team is excited about maintaining Grafana. The questions they ask (where did the quarter actually go, who is underwater, what never moved, what is capitalizable) should not require a query language.
What you give up against a warehouse.
- The licence is FSL, not Apache-2.0. Free to run at any size, commercially, forever — but you cannot resell it as a hosted service, and it converts to Apache-2.0 two years after each release rather than being so today. If OSI-only software is a policy, DevLake wins and we would rather say so than argue.
- No arbitrary SQL. The warehouse lets you ask anything you can express in a query. Deckgauge answers what it ships — DORA, flow, review, workload, focus, CapEx — and everything is visible and contestable, but it is not a general analytics engine.
What people actually ask.
Deckgauge vs Apache DevLake — what is the actual difference?
DevLake collects dev-tool data into a database and hands you Grafana dashboards to query it. That is a fine engineering choice and it is free. Deckgauge is a product on top of the same idea: a Monday-style board your leadership meeting runs on, DORA and flow metrics that work without configuring panels, per-engineer workload, an org chart, roadmaps generated from board data, CapEx/OpEx reporting with a contestable ledger, and role-based access control — all installed with one command, with no query language between you and the answer.
Is Deckgauge open source like DevLake?
Source-available rather than open source: the FSL-1.1-Apache-2.0 licence lets you run it free at any size, commercially, forever, and you can read every line — the difference from Apache-2.0 is one restriction, that you may not resell it as a competing hosted service. Each release converts to Apache-2.0 two years after it ships (v2.0.0 converts on 11 September 2028).
Why not just run DevLake?
If you have the engineering capacity to own a data platform — schemas, SQL, Grafana panels, upgrades, and someone who maintains all of that — DevLake is a solid foundation and we have no argument against it. What organisations repeatedly find is that the warehouse answers the questions an engineer thinks to ask, while the meeting needs the questions a VP asks: where did the quarter go, who is overloaded, what is blocked, what of this is capitalizable. Getting from a warehouse to those answers is a project. Deckgauge ships them on first sync.
Does Deckgauge cost anything?
The self-hosted core is free and uncapped — same deal as DevLake in money terms. If you want us to host it, or need a commercial licence, that is $600 / month published by capacity band, with the number on the pricing page rather than behind a call.
Can they work together?
Today they are parallel installs, and both are read-only against your tracker and Git provider, so running both costs nothing but sync load. A closer integration — DevLake's warehouse as an ingestion source for Deckgauge — is on our list, but it does not exist yet and we do not sell futures on this site.
Try it on the live demo, read the licence, or write to support@codpal.com and a person will answer.