head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs gofr
Grafana Loki has 28,909 GitHub stars, 4,112 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gofr has 20,916 stars, 1,759 forks, 132 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 38% (28,909 vs 20,916 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; gofr is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, gofr 8%. Grafana Loki was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (hacktoberfest, 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 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Grafana Loki | gofr | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 21K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.1K | ⑂ 1.8K |
| 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 gofr if
- You want the gofr feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and gofr 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 gofr
GoFr is an opinionated Go framework for building microservices, aimed at Go developers and platform teams who want HTTP, gRPC, data access and observability built in rather than assembled from separate libraries.
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 gofr more popular?
Grafana Loki has 28,909 GitHub stars and gofr has 20,916. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and gofr free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and gofr under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and gofr?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and gofr 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 gofr?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (28,909 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose gofr if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.