head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs OpenObserve
Grafana Loki has 28,909 GitHub stars, 4,112 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenObserve has 21,993 stars, 1,091 forks, 598 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 31% (28,909 vs 21,993 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; OpenObserve is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, OpenObserve 5%. OpenObserve was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (grafana), 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 | OpenObserve | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 22K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.1K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 OpenObserve if
- You want the OpenObserve feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and OpenObserve fits your workflow better
About Grafana Loki
Grafana Loki is a log aggregation system designed as the log oriented counterpart to Prometheus. It operates within the cloud native observability ecosystem, specifically targeting Kubernetes and containerized environments. Loki avoids expensive full text indexing by indexing only metadata labels attached to log streams, storing the raw log content in compressed form. This design choice makes Loki significantly simpler to operate and more cost effective than traditional log systems that index every word.
read the full Grafana Loki overview →
About OpenObserve
OpenObserve is an open source observability platform for logs, metrics, traces, analytics, Real User Monitoring, session replay, pipelines, SLO, and LLM observability. It lives in the cloud native infrastructure ecosystem and is described as an alternative to Datadog, Splunk, and Elasticsearch. The project is built in Rust, ships as a single binary, and uses Parquet columnar storage with an S3 native design.
read the full OpenObserve overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or OpenObserve more popular?
Grafana Loki has 28,909 GitHub stars and OpenObserve has 21,993. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and OpenObserve free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and OpenObserve under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and OpenObserve?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and OpenObserve in TypeScript. 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 OpenObserve?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (28,909 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose OpenObserve if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.