head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs dozzle
Grafana Loki has 28,917 GitHub stars, 4,115 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dozzle has 14,434 stars, 619 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped today. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 100% (28,917 vs 14,434 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; dozzle is written in Go under MIT. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, dozzle 4%. dozzle 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 | dozzle | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 14K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.1K | ⑂ 619 |
| 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 dozzle if
- You want the dozzle feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and dozzle fits your workflow better
About Grafana Loki
Grafana Loki is a log aggregation system designed as the log oriented counterpart to Prometheus. It operates within the cloud native observability ecosystem, specifically targeting Kubernetes and containerized environments. Loki avoids expensive full text indexing by indexing only metadata labels attached to log streams, storing the raw log content in compressed form. This design choice makes Loki significantly simpler to operate and more cost effective than traditional log systems that index every word.
read the full Grafana Loki overview →
About dozzle
Dozzle is a lightweight, web based application for monitoring Docker logs in real time. It is written in Go and distributed under the MIT license, and it lives in the container and orchestration ecosystem alongside Docker, Docker Swarm and Kubernetes, which its topics and tagline both name. The project ships as a small container — roughly 7 MB compressed — and its user interface is built with Vue.js. It exposes a browser view over logs rather than writing them anywhere: the README states plainly that Dozzle stores no log files and exists purely for live log viewing.
read the full dozzle overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or dozzle more popular?
Grafana Loki has 28,917 GitHub stars and dozzle has 14,434. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and dozzle free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and dozzle under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and dozzle?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and dozzle 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 dozzle?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (28,917 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose dozzle if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.