head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs VictoriaLogs
Grafana Loki has 29,111 GitHub stars, 4,169 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. VictoriaLogs has 2,451 stars, 206 forks, 314 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 1,088% (29,111 vs 2,451 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; VictoriaLogs is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, VictoriaLogs 8%. Grafana Loki was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (grafana, logging, loki), 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 | VictoriaLogs | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 2.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 206 |
| 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 VictoriaLogs if
- You want the VictoriaLogs feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and VictoriaLogs 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 VictoriaLogs
VictoriaLogs VictoriaLogs is a high performance, lightweight, zero config, schema free database for logs that is easy to use and scales both vertically and horizontally, from very small setups to large scale deployments handling terabytes per day. Both the single node and cluster versions of VictoriaLogs are open source and free to use. Here are some resources to help you get started with VictoriaLogs: Playgrounds: built in web UI, Grafana plugin for VictoriaLogs, SQL to LogsQL, LogQL to LogsQL Documentation Available: Binary releases, docker images Docker Hub and Quay, Source code Deployment types: Single node…
read the full VictoriaLogs overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or VictoriaLogs more popular?
Grafana Loki has 29,111 GitHub stars and VictoriaLogs has 2,451. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and VictoriaLogs free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and VictoriaLogs under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and VictoriaLogs?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and VictoriaLogs in Go. 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 VictoriaLogs?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (29,111 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose VictoriaLogs if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.