head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs logging-log4j2
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars, 4,173 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. logging-log4j2 has 3,641 stars, 1,760 forks, 212 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 700% (29,120 vs 3,641 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; logging-log4j2 is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, logging-log4j2 48%. 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 | logging-log4j2 | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 3.6K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 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 logging-log4j2 if
- You want the logging-log4j2 feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and logging-log4j2 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 logging-log4j2
//// Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the…
read the full logging-log4j2 overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or logging-log4j2 more popular?
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars and logging-log4j2 has 3,641. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and logging-log4j2 free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and logging-log4j2 under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and logging-log4j2?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and logging-log4j2 in Java. 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 logging-log4j2?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (29,120 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose logging-log4j2 if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.