head to head · open source
Grafana vs plog
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped today. plog has 2,589 stars, 404 forks, 58 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 2,866% (76,792 vs 2,589 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; plog is written in C++ under MIT. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, plog 16%. 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 | plog | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 2.6K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-08-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 404 |
| 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 plog if
- You want the plog feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and plog 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 plog
Plog portable, simple and extensible C++ logging library Pretty powerful logging library in about 1000 lines of code Introduction Hello log! Features Integration Copy the source Git submodule CMake integration add subdirectory FetchContent Package managers Usage Step 1: Adding includes Step 2: Initialization RollingFileInitializer ConsoleInitializer Manual initialization (Init.h) Step 3: Logging Basic logging macros Conditional logging macros Logger severity checker Advanced usage Changing severity at runtime Custom initialization Multiple appenders Multiple loggers Share log instances across modules (exe, dll, s…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or plog more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and plog has 2,589. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and plog free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and plog under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and plog?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and plog 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 plog?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose plog if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.