head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs mulog
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars, 4,173 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mulog has 540 stars, 50 forks, 12 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 5,293% (29,120 vs 540 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; mulog is written in Clojure under Apache-2.0. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, mulog 9%. 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 | mulog | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 540 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Clojure |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-06-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 50 |
| 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 mulog if
- You want the mulog feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Clojure
- You evaluated both and mulog 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 mulog
μ/log μ/log (Pronounced: /mjuːlog/) is a micro logging library that logs events and data, not words! From the Greek letter μ , mu (Pronunciation: /mjuː/) The twelfth letter of the Greek alphabet (Μ, μ), often used as a prefix for micro which is 10 6 in the SI (System of Units). Lowercase letter " u " is often substituted for " μ " when the Greek character is not typographically available. (source: Features Here some features and key design decisions that make μ/log special: Effortlessly, logs events as data points. No need to construct strings that then need to be deconstructed later. Fast, extremely fast, under…
read the full mulog overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or mulog more popular?
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars and mulog has 540. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and mulog free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and mulog under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and mulog?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and mulog in Clojure. 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 mulog?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (29,120 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose mulog if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.