head to head · open source
Grafana vs hl
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hl has 3,317 stars, 68 forks, 13 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 2,241% (77,638 vs 3,317 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; hl is written in Rust under MIT. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, hl 2%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | hl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 3.3K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 68 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Grafana if
- You weight community size — 78K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick hl if
- You want the hl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and hl fits your workflow better
About Grafana
The open source platform for monitoring and observability Grafana allows you to query, visualize, alert on and understand your metrics no matter where they are stored. Create, explore, and share dashboards with your team and foster a data driven culture: Visualizations: Fast and flexible client side graphs with a multitude of options. Panel plugins offer many different ways to visualize metrics and logs. Dynamic Dashboards: Create dynamic & reusable dashboards with template variables that appear as dropdowns at the top of the dashboard. Explore Metrics: Explore your data through ad hoc queries and dynamic…
read the full Grafana overview →
About hl
hl [![Build Status][ci img]][ci] [![Coverage Status][cov img]][cov] [![Release][release img]][release] High performance log viewer and processor that transforms logs in JSON and logfmt formats into a human readable output. Built with efficiency in mind, it enables quick parsing and analysis of large log files with minimal overhead. Features overview Automatic Pager Integration : Automatically integrates with a pager for enhanced convenience, defaulting to less if available, but fully supporting any compatible pager. Log Streaming Mode : Enable log streaming with the P flag, which disables the pager. Field Based…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or hl more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and hl has 3,317. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and hl free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and hl under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and hl?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and hl in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Grafana or hl?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose hl if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.