head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs otelbin
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars, 4,173 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. otelbin has 584 stars, 31 forks, 53 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 4,886% (29,120 vs 584 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; otelbin is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, otelbin 5%. 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 | otelbin | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 584 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 31 |
| 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 otelbin if
- You want the otelbin feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and otelbin 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 otelbin
OTelBin OTelBin is a configuration tool for OpenTelemetry collector pipelines. Introduction · Features · Badges · Tech Stack · Contributing · License Introduction OTelBin is a configuration tool to help you get the most out of the OpenTelemetry Collector. OTelBin hosted with :heart: by the Dash0 people at otelbin.io. Features OTelBin will enable you to: 1. Visualize for you the configured OpenTelemetry Collector pipelines as swimlanes 1. Validate your configuration and highlight errors 1. Enable you to share your OpenTelemetry Collector configurations online (requires login with a GitHub or Google account)…
read the full otelbin overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or otelbin more popular?
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars and otelbin has 584. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and otelbin free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and otelbin under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and otelbin?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and otelbin 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 otelbin?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (29,120 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose otelbin if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.