head to head · open source
gofr vs lnav
gofr has 20,909 GitHub stars, 1,760 forks, 132 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. lnav has 10,683 stars, 404 forks, 295 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gofr leads on adoption by 96% (20,909 vs 10,683 stars). gofr is written in Go under Apache-2.0; lnav is written in C++ under BSD-2-Clause. gofr has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, lnav 4%. lnav was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (logging), 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
| gofr | lnav | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 11K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | Go | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.8K | ⑂ 404 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick gofr if
- You weight community size — 21K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick lnav if
- You want the lnav feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and lnav fits your workflow better
About gofr
GoFr is an opinionated Go framework for building microservices, aimed at Go developers and platform teams who want HTTP, gRPC, data access and observability built in rather than assembled from separate libraries.
About lnav
lnav is a log file viewer for the terminal that decompresses, detects the format of, merges, indexes and queries log files in one interactive text interface, built for developers, system administrators and support engineers who diagnose systems from the command line.
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Frequently asked questions
Is gofr or lnav more popular?
gofr has 20,909 GitHub stars and lnav has 10,683. gofr has the larger community by that measure.
Are gofr and lnav free?
Both are open source. gofr is licensed under Apache-2.0 and lnav under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gofr and lnav?
gofr is written in Go and lnav in C++. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, gofr or lnav?
Choose gofr if you want the larger community (20,909 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose lnav if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.