What is OpenSearch Dashboards used for?

OpenSearch Dashboards is an open-source visualization and exploration interface for OpenSearch, used to build dashboards and analyze indexed data. It is a good fit for visualizing logs and metrics stored in OpenSearch, and operational and security dashboards.

Is OpenSearch Dashboards open source?

Yes. OpenSearch Dashboards is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at opensearch-project/OpenSearch-Dashboards and is written mainly in TypeScript.

Is OpenSearch Dashboards free?

Yes. OpenSearch Dashboards is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host OpenSearch Dashboards?

Yes. OpenSearch Dashboards can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is OpenSearch Dashboards an alternative to?

OpenSearch Dashboards is an open-source alternative to Elastic, Splunk, Sumo Logic and Logz.io. Other open-source alternatives to Elastic include OpenObserve and Quickwit.

Is OpenSearch Dashboards actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to OpenSearch Dashboards was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is 3.8.0, published on 1 September 2026. The project has 2.1k stars on GitHub.

OpenSearch Dashboards: open-source alternative to Elastic

About OpenSearch Dashboards

OpenSearch Dashboards is the data visualization tool that accompanies OpenSearch. It provides charts, dashboards, and exploration features that help turn indexed data into business intelligence and support data-driven decisions and planning. It is written in TypeScript and released under the Apache-2.0 license.

The project is community-driven and welcomes contributions through issues, feedback, ideas, and code, and the README points to resources for setting up a development environment, the code of conduct, and licensing information. It began as a fork of Kibana, which is why it follows a similar model of visualization over a search and analytics engine.

Dashboards is used together with an OpenSearch cluster and is self-hosted or run through managed services from cloud vendors. It suits operations, security, and analytics teams that already store logs, metrics, and documents in OpenSearch and need a way to search, visualize, and share insights.

Key features

Data visualization for OpenSearch
Dashboards and charts
Data exploration interface
Business intelligence support
Community-driven open-source development
Plugin-friendly architecture

Good fit for

→Visualizing logs and metrics stored in OpenSearch
→Operational and security dashboards

Built with: TypeScript
Tags: opensearch; dashboards; data-visualization; analytics; search; logs; business-intelligence; typescript

OpenSearch Dashboards: questions and answers

What is OpenSearch Dashboards used for?: OpenSearch Dashboards is an open-source visualization and exploration interface for OpenSearch, used to build dashboards and analyze indexed data. It is a good fit for visualizing logs and metrics stored in OpenSearch, and operational and security dashboards.
Is OpenSearch Dashboards open source?: Yes. OpenSearch Dashboards is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at opensearch-project/OpenSearch-Dashboards and is written mainly in TypeScript.
Is OpenSearch Dashboards free?: Yes. OpenSearch Dashboards is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host OpenSearch Dashboards?: Yes. OpenSearch Dashboards can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is OpenSearch Dashboards an alternative to?: OpenSearch Dashboards is an open-source alternative to Elastic, Splunk, Sumo Logic and Logz.io. Other open-source alternatives to Elastic include OpenObserve and Quickwit.
Is OpenSearch Dashboards actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to OpenSearch Dashboards was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is 3.8.0, published on 1 September 2026. The project has 2.1k stars on GitHub.