head to head · open source
Grafana vs logbook
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. logbook has 2,071 stars, 290 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 3,649% (77,638 vs 2,071 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; logbook is written in Java under MIT. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, logbook 14%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (monitoring), 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 | logbook | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 290 |
| 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 logbook if
- You want the logbook feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and logbook 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 logbook
Logbook: HTTP request and response logging Logbook noun, /lɑɡ bʊk/: A book in which measurements from the ship's log are recorded, along with other salient details of the voyage. Logbook is an extensible Java library to enable complete request and response logging for different client and server side technologies. It satisfies a special need by a) allowing web application developers to log any HTTP traffic that an application receives or sends b) in a way that makes it easy to persist and analyze it later. This can be useful for traditional log analysis, meeting audit requirements or investigating individual…
read the full logbook overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or logbook more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and logbook has 2,071. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and logbook free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and logbook under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and logbook?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and logbook 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 or logbook?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose logbook if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.