head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs alloy
Grafana Loki has 29,111 GitHub stars, 4,169 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. alloy has 3,662 stars, 760 forks, 1,237 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 695% (29,111 vs 3,662 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; alloy is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, alloy 21%. alloy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (grafana, loki, prometheus), 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
| Grafana Loki | alloy | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 3.7K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 760 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Grafana Loki if
- You weight community size — 29K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick alloy if
- You want the alloy feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and alloy fits your workflow better
About Grafana Loki
Loki: like Prometheus, but for logs. Loki is a horizontally scalable, highly available, multi tenant log aggregation system inspired by Prometheus. It is designed to be very cost effective and easy to operate. It does not index the contents of the logs, but rather a set of labels for each log stream. Compared to other log aggregation systems, Loki: does not do full text indexing on logs. By storing compressed, unstructured logs and only indexing metadata, Loki is simpler to operate and cheaper to run. indexes and groups log streams using the same labels you’re already using with Prometheus, enabling you to…
read the full Grafana Loki overview →
About alloy
Grafana Alloy is an open source OpenTelemetry Collector distribution with built in Prometheus pipelines and support for metrics, logs, traces, and profiles. What can Alloy do? Programmable pipelines : Use a rich [expression based syntax][syntax] for configuring powerful observability pipelines. OpenTelemetry Collector Distribution : Alloy is a [distribution][] of OpenTelemetry Collector and supports dozens of its components, alongside new components that make use of Alloy's programmable pipelines. Big tent : Alloy embraces Grafana's "big tent" philosophy, where Alloy can be used with other vendors or open source…
read the full alloy overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or alloy more popular?
Grafana Loki has 29,111 GitHub stars and alloy has 3,662. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and alloy free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and alloy under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and alloy?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and alloy 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, Grafana Loki or alloy?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (29,111 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose alloy if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.