head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs log
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars, 4,173 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. log has 3,415 stars, 105 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 753% (29,120 vs 3,415 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; log is written in Go under MIT. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, log 3%. 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 | log | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 3.4K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 105 |
| 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 log if
- You want the log feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and log 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 log
Log A minimal and colorful Go logging library. 🪵 It provides a leveled structured human readable logger with a small API. Unlike [standard log ][stdlog], the Charm logger provides customizable colorful human readable logging with batteries included. Uses [Lip Gloss][lipgloss] to style and colorize the output. Colorful, human readable format. Ability to customize the time stamp format. Skips caller frames and marks function as helpers. Leveled logging. Text, JSON, and Logfmt formatters. Store and retrieve logger in and from context. Slog handler. Standard log adapter. Usage Use go get to download the dependency…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or log more popular?
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars and log has 3,415. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and log free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and log under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and log?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and log 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 log?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (29,120 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose log if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.