head to head · open source
Grafana vs monolog
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars, 14,749 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. monolog has 21,406 stars, 1,910 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 259% (76,791 vs 21,406 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; monolog is written in PHP under MIT. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, monolog 9%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (hacktoberfest), 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Grafana | monolog | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 21K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 1.9K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Grafana if
- You weight community size — 77K 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 monolog if
- You want the monolog feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and monolog fits your workflow better
About Grafana
Grafana is an open source observability platform for visualizing metrics, logs, and traces across diverse data sources. It runs in the infrastructure and operations ecosystem, designed for teams needing unified visibility into system behavior without vendor lock in. Built with TypeScript and Go, it provides a composable architecture that integrates with existing toolchains.
read the full Grafana overview →
About monolog
Monolog is a logging library for PHP that sends log records to files, sockets, inboxes, databases, and various web services. It ships with the handlers, formatters, and processors needed to route records where they belong, and special handlers allow more advanced logging strategies than a single output stream. The library lives in the PHP ecosystem and is distributed through Packagist as monolog/monolog . It is released under the MIT license and has been developed for sixteen years, with more than twenty one thousand stars and roughly nineteen hundred forks on GitHub.
read the full monolog overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Monitoring & Observability projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Monitoring & Observability field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or monolog more popular?
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars and monolog has 21,406. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and monolog free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and monolog under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and monolog?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and monolog in PHP. 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 monolog?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,791 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose monolog if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.