head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs kotlin-logging
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars, 4,173 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kotlin-logging has 3,116 stars, 131 forks, 21 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 835% (29,120 vs 3,116 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; kotlin-logging is written in Kotlin under Apache-2.0. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, kotlin-logging 4%. 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 | kotlin-logging | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 3.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Kotlin |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 131 |
| 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 kotlin-logging if
- You want the kotlin-logging feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Kotlin
- You evaluated both and kotlin-logging 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 kotlin-logging
kotlin logging Lightweight Multiplatform logging framework for Kotlin, written in . A convenient and performant logging facade. Call log methods, without checking whether the respective log level is enabled Behind the scenes the expensive message do not get evaluated if debug is not enabled: Define the logger, without explicitly specifying the class name Behind the scenes val logger will be created in the class, with the class/file name: Log exceptions in a Kotlin style Fluent logging in a Kotlin style Getting started Download Important note: kotlin logging depends on slf4j api (in the JVM artifact). In runtime…
read the full kotlin-logging overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or kotlin-logging more popular?
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars and kotlin-logging has 3,116. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and kotlin-logging free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and kotlin-logging under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and kotlin-logging?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and kotlin-logging in Kotlin. 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 kotlin-logging?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (29,120 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose kotlin-logging if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.