head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs Logstash
Grafana Loki has 29,111 GitHub stars, 4,169 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Logstash has 14,972 stars, 3,503 forks, 2,254 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 94% (29,111 vs 14,972 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; Logstash is written in Java under a custom or non-standard licence. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, Logstash 23%. 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 | Logstash | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 15K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 3.5K |
| 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 Logstash if
- You want the Logstash feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and Logstash 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 Logstash
Logstash Logstash is part of the Elastic Stack along with Beats, Elasticsearch and Kibana. Logstash is a server side data processing pipeline that ingests data from a multitude of sources simultaneously, transforms it, and then sends it to your favorite "stash." (Ours is Elasticsearch, naturally.). Logstash has over 200 plugins, and you can write your own very easily as well. For more info, see Documentation and Getting Started You can find the documentation and getting started guides for Logstash on the elastic.co site For information about building the documentation, see the README in Downloads You can…
read the full Logstash overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or Logstash more popular?
Grafana Loki has 29,111 GitHub stars and Logstash has 14,972. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and Logstash free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0, and Logstash has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and Logstash?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and Logstash 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 Logstash?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (29,111 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Logstash if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.