head to head · open source
gofr vs nerdlog
gofr has 20,821 GitHub stars, 1,792 forks, 132 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. nerdlog has 1,590 stars, 41 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. gofr leads on adoption by 1,209% (20,821 vs 1,590 stars). gofr is written in Go under Apache-2.0; nerdlog is written in Go under BSD-2-Clause. gofr has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, nerdlog 3%. gofr was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (go, 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 | nerdlog | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.8K | ⑂ 41 |
| 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 nerdlog if
- You want the nerdlog feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and nerdlog 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 nerdlog
Nerdlog Nerdlog is a fast, remote first, multi host TUI log viewer with timeline histogram and no central server. Loosely inspired by Graylog/Kibana, but without the bloat. Pretty much no setup needed, either. It's laser focused on being efficient while querying logs from multiple remote machines simultaneously, filtering them by time range and patterns, while also drawing an interactive timeline histogram for quick visual insight. Primary use case: reading system logs (from the files /var/log/messages or /var/log/syslog , or straight from journalctl ) from one or more remote hosts. Very efficient even on large…
read the full nerdlog overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gofr or nerdlog more popular?
gofr has 20,821 GitHub stars and nerdlog has 1,590. gofr has the larger community by that measure.
Are gofr and nerdlog free?
Both are open source. gofr is licensed under Apache-2.0 and nerdlog under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gofr and nerdlog?
gofr is written in Go and nerdlog 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, gofr or nerdlog?
Choose gofr if you want the larger community (20,821 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose nerdlog if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.