head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs khi
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars, 4,173 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped today. khi has 2,087 stars, 100 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped today. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 1,295% (29,120 vs 2,087 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; khi is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, khi 5%. 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 | khi | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 100 |
| 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 khi if
- You want the khi 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 khi 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 khi
Language: English 日本語 Kubernetes History Inspector Kubernetes History Inspector (KHI) is a rich log visualization tool for Kubernetes clusters. KHI transforms vast quantities of logs into an interactive, comprehensive timeline view. This makes it an invaluable tool for troubleshooting complex issues that span multiple components within your Kubernetes clusters. Also, KHI is agentless, allowing anyone to access its features without a complicated process. Timeline view Topology view Timeline view visualizes resource status change timings with timeline charts and manifest diffs from Kubernetes audit logs. Topology…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or khi more popular?
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars and khi has 2,087. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and khi free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and khi under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and khi?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and khi 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 khi?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (29,120 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose khi if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.