head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs opentelemetry-php
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars, 4,173 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. opentelemetry-php has 920 stars, 233 forks, 97 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 3,065% (29,120 vs 920 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; opentelemetry-php is written in PHP under Apache-2.0. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, opentelemetry-php 25%. 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 | opentelemetry-php | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 920 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 233 |
| 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 opentelemetry-php if
- You want the opentelemetry-php feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and opentelemetry-php 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 opentelemetry-php
OpenTelemetry for PHP This is the monorepo for the main components of OpenTelemetry for PHP. Documentation Please read the official documentation: API Documentation is available here: AI Assistance If you're planning on using AI to contribute to the OpenTelemetry PHP repositories, please follow the OpenTelemetry GenAI Policies. Packages and versions Releases for both this repository and contrib are based on read only git subtree splits from our monorepo. You should refer to packagist.org for all packages, their versions and details. You can also look at the read only repositories, which live in the opentelemetry…
read the full opentelemetry-php overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or opentelemetry-php more popular?
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars and opentelemetry-php has 920. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and opentelemetry-php free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and opentelemetry-php under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and opentelemetry-php?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and opentelemetry-php in PHP. 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 opentelemetry-php?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (29,120 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose opentelemetry-php if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.