head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs skywalking-java
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars, 4,173 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. skywalking-java has 927 stars, 694 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 3,041% (29,120 vs 927 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; skywalking-java is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, skywalking-java 75%. 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 | skywalking-java | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 927 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 694 |
| 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 skywalking-java if
- You want the skywalking-java feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and skywalking-java 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 skywalking-java
Apache SkyWalking Java Agent ========== SkyWalking Java: The Java Agent for Apache SkyWalking, which provides the native tracing/metrics/logging abilities for Java projects. SkyWalking: an APM(application performance monitor) system, especially designed for microservices, cloud native and container based (Docker and Kubernetes) architectures. Documentation Official documentation Downloads Please head to the releases page to download a release of Apache SkyWalking. Code of conduct This project adheres to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct. By participating, you are expected to uphold this code. Please…
read the full skywalking-java overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or skywalking-java more popular?
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars and skywalking-java has 927. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and skywalking-java free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and skywalking-java under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and skywalking-java?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and skywalking-java 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 skywalking-java?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (29,120 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose skywalking-java if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.