head to head · open source
Grafana vs NLog
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars, 14,749 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NLog has 6,546 stars, 1,379 forks, 50 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 1,073% (76,791 vs 6,546 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; NLog is written in C# under BSD-3-Clause. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, NLog 21%. 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 | NLog | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | TypeScript | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 NLog if
- You want the NLog feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and NLog 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 NLog
NLog is a free logging platform for .NET, distributed under the BSD 3 Clause license and maintained in the NLog/NLog repository on GitHub. It provides rich log routing and management capabilities, so an application can produce and manage high quality logs regardless of its size or complexity. It lives in the .NET ecosystem, is written in C , and targets cross platform use across .NET Framework, .NET Core, ASP.NET Core, MAUI, and Mono. The project has been developed for fourteen years and is published as the NLog package on NuGet, with the current 6.0 line adding AOT support.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or NLog more popular?
Grafana has 76,791 GitHub stars and NLog has 6,546. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and NLog free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and NLog under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and NLog?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and NLog in C#. 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 NLog?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,791 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose NLog if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.