head to head · open source
effect vs superlog
effect has 16,138 GitHub stars, 752 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped today. superlog has 1,451 stars, 117 forks, 83 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. effect leads on adoption by 1,012% (16,138 vs 1,451 stars). effect is written in TypeScript under MIT; superlog is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. effect has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, superlog 8%. effect was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (observability, opentelemetry, typescript), 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
| effect | superlog | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 752 | ⑂ 117 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick effect if
- You weight community size — 16K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick superlog if
- You want the superlog feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and superlog fits your workflow better
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 →
About superlog
Superlog is an open source, Apache 2.0 agentic telemetry system that ingests OpenTelemetry traces, logs and metrics, groups noisy signals into incidents, and hands investigation work to pluggable agent runtimes — built for teams that want a local first observability workspace they can self host.
read the full superlog overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is effect or superlog more popular?
effect has 16,138 GitHub stars and superlog has 1,451. effect has the larger community by that measure.
Are effect and superlog free?
Both are open source. effect is licensed under MIT and superlog under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between effect and superlog?
effect is written in TypeScript and superlog 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, effect or superlog?
Choose effect if you want the larger community (16,138 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose superlog if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.