head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs logchef
Grafana Loki has 29,124 GitHub stars, 4,174 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. logchef has 928 stars, 62 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 3,038% (29,124 vs 928 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; logchef is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, logchef 7%. 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 | logchef | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 928 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 62 |
| 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 logchef if
- You want the logchef feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and logchef 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 logchef
The open source log workspace for ClickHouse and VictoriaLogs. Search, live tail, dashboards, alerts, and access control in one self hosted binary. Try Demo · Read Documentation · What's new in v2.0 Logchef is a lightweight, self hosted log analytics and observability platform for teams that want a strong query and control plane on top of the log backends they already run. Connect ClickHouse, VictoriaLogs, or both. Logchef gives them one workflow for exploration, dashboards, saved queries, alerting, and access control — without moving or reshaping your data. If you are evaluating VictoriaLogs specifically, start…
read the full logchef overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or logchef more popular?
Grafana Loki has 29,124 GitHub stars and logchef has 928. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and logchef free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and logchef under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and logchef?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and logchef 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 logchef?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (29,124 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose logchef if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.