head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs Checkmate
Grafana Loki has 28,917 GitHub stars, 4,115 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Checkmate has 10,857 stars, 1,206 forks, 114 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 166% (28,917 vs 10,857 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; Checkmate is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, Checkmate 11%. Grafana Loki was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (hacktoberfest), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Grafana Loki | Checkmate | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 11K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.1K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Grafana Loki if
- You weight community size — 29K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Checkmate if
- You want the Checkmate feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Checkmate fits your workflow better
About Grafana Loki
Grafana Loki is a log aggregation system designed as the log oriented counterpart to Prometheus. It operates within the cloud native observability ecosystem, specifically targeting Kubernetes and containerized environments. Loki avoids expensive full text indexing by indexing only metadata labels attached to log streams, storing the raw log content in compressed form. This design choice makes Loki significantly simpler to operate and more cost effective than traditional log systems that index every word.
read the full Grafana Loki overview →
About Checkmate
Checkmate is an open source, self hosted monitoring application for infrastructure and observability. It is written in TypeScript and released under the AGPL 3.0 license. The repository contains the frontend and backend, and the project sits in the infrastructure monitoring ecosystem for teams that need to track servers, websites, and hardware status without relying on a hosted only product.
read the full Checkmate overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or Checkmate more popular?
Grafana Loki has 28,917 GitHub stars and Checkmate has 10,857. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and Checkmate free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Checkmate under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and Checkmate?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and Checkmate in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Grafana Loki or Checkmate?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (28,917 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Checkmate if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.