head to head · open source
Grafana vs picologging
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. picologging has 780 stars, 29 forks, 52 open issues and last shipped 16 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 9,745% (76,792 vs 780 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; picologging is written in Python under MIT. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, picologging 4%. 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.
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Side by side
| Grafana | picologging | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 780 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 29 |
| 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 picologging if
- You want the picologging feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and picologging 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 picologging
Picologging is a high performance logging library for Python, published by Microsoft under the MIT licence, that works as a drop in replacement for the standard library logging module and is aimed at Python developers who want faster logging without rewriting existing logging code.
read the full picologging overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or picologging more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and picologging has 780. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and picologging free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and picologging under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and picologging?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and picologging in Python. 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 picologging?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose picologging if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.