head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs clp
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars, 4,173 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. clp has 1,091 stars, 95 forks, 493 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 2,569% (29,120 vs 1,091 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; clp is written in C++ under Apache-2.0. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, clp 9%. 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 | clp | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 95 |
| 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 clp if
- You want the clp feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and clp 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 clp
[![Discord][badge discord]][clp community discord] [![Slack][badge slack]][clp community slack] [![CLP on Zulip][badge zulip]][yscope community zulip] YScope's Compressed Log Processor (CLP) compresses your logs, and allows you to search the compressed logs without decompression. CLP supports both JSON logs and unstructured (i.e., free text) logs. It also supports real time log compression within several logging libraries. CLP also includes purpose built web interfaces for searching and viewing the compressed logs. To learn more about it, read our [2021 paper][clp paper 21] about handling unstructured logs and…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or clp more popular?
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars and clp has 1,091. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and clp free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and clp under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and clp?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and clp 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, Grafana Loki or clp?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (29,120 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose clp if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.