head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs flogger
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars, 4,173 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped today. flogger has 1,481 stars, 133 forks, 53 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 1,866% (29,120 vs 1,481 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; flogger is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, flogger 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Grafana Loki | flogger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 133 |
| 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 flogger if
- You want the flogger feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and flogger 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 flogger
Flogger: A Fluent Logging API for Java What is it? Flogger is a fluent logging API for Java. It supports a wide variety of features, and has [many benefits] over existing logging APIs. Come for more self documenting log statements: Stay for additional features that help you manage your logging better: Benefits While some users prefer "fluency" as a style, this is not what the argument for Flogger rests on. Flogger offers these key, concrete advantages over other logging APIs: Logging at disabled levels is [effectively free]. Finally, you can add as many fine grained log statements to your code as you want…
read the full flogger overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Monitoring & Observability projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Monitoring & Observability field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or flogger more popular?
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars and flogger has 1,481. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and flogger free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and flogger under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and flogger?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and flogger in Java. 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 flogger?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (29,120 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose flogger if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.