head to head · open source
gofr vs NLog
gofr has 20,817 GitHub stars, 1,790 forks, 132 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. NLog has 6,546 stars, 1,378 forks, 50 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. gofr leads on adoption by 218% (20,817 vs 6,546 stars). gofr is written in Go under Apache-2.0; NLog is written in C# under BSD-3-Clause. gofr has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, NLog 21%. 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 | NLog | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Go | C# |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-03 |
| 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
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 NLog
NLog is a free logging platform for .NET with rich log routing and management capabilities. It makes it easy to produce and manage high quality logs for your application regardless of its size or complexity. Handles both structured logging and traditional logging from any .NET language, augment with contextual information, format according to your preference and send them to one or more targets such as file or console. Major and minor releases will be posted on project news. Getting started .NET Framework ASP.NET Core .NET Core Console For the possible options in the config, check the Options list and API…
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Frequently asked questions
Is gofr or NLog more popular?
gofr has 20,817 GitHub stars and NLog has 6,546. 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 (20,817 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.