head to head · open source
gofr vs NLog
gofr has 20,909 GitHub stars, 1,760 forks, 132 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. NLog has 6,545 stars, 1,377 forks, 50 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gofr leads on adoption by 219% (20,909 vs 6,545 stars). gofr is written in Go under Apache-2.0; NLog is written in C# under BSD-3-Clause. gofr has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, NLog 21%. NLog 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| gofr | NLog | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Go | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.8K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 NLog if
- You want the NLog feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and NLog 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 NLog
NLog is a free logging platform for .NET, distributed under the BSD 3 Clause license and maintained in the NLog/NLog repository on GitHub. It provides rich log routing and management capabilities, so an application can produce and manage high quality logs regardless of its size or complexity. It lives in the .NET ecosystem, is written in C , and targets cross platform use across .NET Framework, .NET Core, ASP.NET Core, MAUI, and Mono. The project has been developed for fourteen years and is published as the NLog package on NuGet, with the current 6.0 line adding AOT support.
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Monitoring & Observability projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Monitoring & Observability field.
Frequently asked questions
Is gofr or NLog more popular?
gofr has 20,909 GitHub stars and NLog has 6,545. gofr has the larger community by that measure.
Are gofr and NLog free?
Both are open source. gofr is licensed under Apache-2.0 and NLog under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gofr and NLog?
gofr is written in Go and NLog 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 NLog?
Choose gofr if you want the larger community (20,909 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose NLog if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.