head to head · open source
Grafana vs Logstash
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Logstash has 14,972 stars, 3,503 forks, 2,254 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 419% (77,638 vs 14,972 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; Logstash is written in Java under a custom or non-standard licence. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, Logstash 23%. 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 | Logstash | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 15K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | TypeScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 3.5K |
| 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 Logstash if
- You want the Logstash feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and Logstash 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 Logstash
Logstash Logstash is part of the Elastic Stack along with Beats, Elasticsearch and Kibana. Logstash is a server side data processing pipeline that ingests data from a multitude of sources simultaneously, transforms it, and then sends it to your favorite "stash." (Ours is Elasticsearch, naturally.). Logstash has over 200 plugins, and you can write your own very easily as well. For more info, see Documentation and Getting Started You can find the documentation and getting started guides for Logstash on the elastic.co site For information about building the documentation, see the README in Downloads You can…
read the full Logstash overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or Logstash more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and Logstash has 14,972. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and Logstash free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0, and Logstash has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Grafana and Logstash?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and Logstash 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 Logstash?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Logstash if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.