head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs Cloudlog
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars, 4,173 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Cloudlog has 576 stars, 212 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 4,956% (29,120 vs 576 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; Cloudlog is written in PHP under MIT. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, Cloudlog 37%. Grafana Loki 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
| Grafana Loki | Cloudlog | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 576 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 212 |
| 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 Cloudlog if
- You want the Cloudlog feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and Cloudlog 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 Cloudlog
Cloudlog Important: Only accepting PRs on the "dev" branch. Cloudlog is a self hosted PHP application that allows you to log your amateur radio contacts anywhere. All you need is a web browser and active internet connection. While Cloudlog as started by Peter Goodhall, MM9SQL, although since has received a lot of community code contributions. If you would like to contribute to Cloudlog please see the Contributing section below. Website: Requirements Linux based Operating System Apache (Nginx should work) PHP Version 7.4 (PHP 8.2 works) MySQL (MySQL 5.7 or higher) Notes If you want to log microwave QSOs you will…
read the full Cloudlog overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or Cloudlog more popular?
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars and Cloudlog has 576. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and Cloudlog free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Cloudlog under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and Cloudlog?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and Cloudlog in PHP. 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 Cloudlog?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (29,120 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Cloudlog if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.