head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs effect
Grafana Loki has 28,909 GitHub stars, 4,112 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. effect has 16,097 stars, 747 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 80% (28,909 vs 16,097 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; effect is written in TypeScript under MIT. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, effect 5%. effect was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | effect | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 16K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.1K | ⑂ 747 |
| 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 effect if
- You want the effect feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and effect 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 effect
Effect is a TypeScript library for building robust, maintainable, type safe, and production grade applications. It lives in the TypeScript and JavaScript ecosystem, distributed as the core effect package alongside a monorepo of integration packages that extend it. The project is MIT licensed, has been developed for roughly seven years, and currently ships Effect V4 as a release candidate, with the main branch holding v4 development and the v3 branch retaining the previous line.
read the full effect overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or effect more popular?
Grafana Loki has 28,909 GitHub stars and effect has 16,097. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and effect free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and effect under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and effect?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and effect 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 effect?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (28,909 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose effect if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.