head to head · open source
gofr vs lnav
gofr has 20,817 GitHub stars, 1,790 forks, 132 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. lnav has 10,778 stars, 415 forks, 295 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. gofr leads on adoption by 93% (20,817 vs 10,778 stars). gofr is written in Go under Apache-2.0; lnav is written in C++ under BSD-2-Clause. gofr has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, lnav 4%. gofr 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 | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.8K | ⑂ 415 |
| 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
Go Fr GoFr: An Opinionated Microservice Development Framework Listed in the CNCF Landscape 🎯 Goal GoFr is designed to simplify microservice development , with a key focus on Kubernetes deployment and out of the box observability . While capable of building generic applications, microservices remain at its core. 💡 Key Features 1. Simple API Syntax 2. REST Standards by Default 3. Configuration Management 4. Observability (Logs, Traces, Metrics) 5. Inbuilt Auth Middleware & Custom Middleware Support 6. gRPC Support 7. HTTP Service with Circuit Breaker Support 8. Pub/Sub 9. Health Check for All Datasources 10…
About lnav
This is the source repository for lnav , visit for a high level overview. LNAV The Logfile Navigator The Logfile Navigator is a log file viewer for the terminal. Given a set of files/directories, lnav will: decompress as needed; detect their format; merge the files by time into a single view; tail the files, follow renames, find new files in directories; build an index of errors and warnings; pretty print JSON lines. Then, in the lnav TUI, you can: jump quickly to the previous/next error (press e / E ); search using regular expressions (press / ); highlight text with a regular expression ( :highlight command)…
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Frequently asked questions
Is gofr or lnav more popular?
gofr has 20,817 GitHub stars and lnav has 10,778. 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 (20,817 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.