head to head · open source
Grafana vs logchef
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. logchef has 924 stars, 61 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 8,302% (77,638 vs 924 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; logchef is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, logchef 7%. 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 | logchef | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 924 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 61 |
| 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 logchef if
- You want the logchef feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and logchef 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 logchef
The open source log workspace for ClickHouse and VictoriaLogs. Search, live tail, dashboards, alerts, and access control in one self hosted binary. Try Demo · Read Documentation · What's new in v2.0 Logchef is a lightweight, self hosted log analytics and observability platform for teams that want a strong query and control plane on top of the log backends they already run. Connect ClickHouse, VictoriaLogs, or both. Logchef gives them one workflow for exploration, dashboards, saved queries, alerting, and access control — without moving or reshaping your data. If you are evaluating VictoriaLogs specifically, start…
read the full logchef overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or logchef more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and logchef has 924. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and logchef free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and logchef under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and logchef?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and logchef 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 or logchef?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose logchef if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.