head to head · open source
Elasticsearch vs Grafana Loki
Elasticsearch has 77,926 GitHub stars, 26,071 forks, 6,059 open issues and last shipped today. Grafana Loki has 28,908 stars, 4,112 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped today. Elasticsearch leads on adoption by 170% (77,926 vs 28,908 stars). Elasticsearch is written in Java under a custom or non-standard licence; Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. Elasticsearch has attracted 33% as many forks as stars, Grafana Loki 14%. Elasticsearch 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
| Elasticsearch | Grafana Loki | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 29K |
| License | Custom / other | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 26K | ⑂ 4.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Elasticsearch if
- You weight community size — 78K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Grafana Loki if
- You want the Grafana Loki feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Grafana Loki fits your workflow better
About Elasticsearch
Elasticsearch is a distributed search and analytics engine built in Java, designed for near real time search, scalability, and high performance data querying on production workloads. It serves as the core storage and indexing layer of Elastic’s open stack and supports full text, structured, and vector based search.
read the full Elasticsearch overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Elasticsearch or Grafana Loki more popular?
Elasticsearch has 77,926 GitHub stars and Grafana Loki has 28,908. Elasticsearch has the larger community by that measure.
Are Elasticsearch and Grafana Loki free?
Both are open source. Elasticsearch has no licence declared in this registry, and Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Elasticsearch and Grafana Loki?
Elasticsearch is written in Java and Grafana Loki in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Elasticsearch or Grafana Loki?
Choose Elasticsearch if you want the larger community (77,926 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Grafana Loki if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.