head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs CocoaLumberjack
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars, 4,173 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. CocoaLumberjack has 13,320 stars, 2,272 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 119% (29,120 vs 13,320 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; CocoaLumberjack is written in Objective-C under BSD-3-Clause. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, CocoaLumberjack 17%. 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 | CocoaLumberjack | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 13K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Go | Objective-C |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| 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 CocoaLumberjack if
- You want the CocoaLumberjack feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Objective-C
- You evaluated both and CocoaLumberjack 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 CocoaLumberjack
CocoaLumberjack =============== CocoaLumberjack is a fast & simple, yet powerful & flexible logging framework for macOS, iOS, tvOS, watchOS and visionOS. How to get started First, install CocoaLumberjack via Swift Package Manager, CocoaPods, Carthage or manually. Then use DDOSLogger for iOS 10 and later, or DDTTYLogger and DDASLLogger for earlier versions to begin logging messages. Swift Package Manager As of CocoaLumberjack 3.6.0, you can use the Swift Package Manager as integration method. If you want to use the Swift Package Manager as integration method, either use Xcode to add the package dependency or add…
read the full CocoaLumberjack overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or CocoaLumberjack more popular?
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars and CocoaLumberjack has 13,320. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and CocoaLumberjack free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and CocoaLumberjack under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and CocoaLumberjack?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and CocoaLumberjack in Objective-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 CocoaLumberjack?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (29,120 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose CocoaLumberjack if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.