head to head · open source
Grafana vs rsyslog
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rsyslog has 2,345 stars, 743 forks, 207 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 3,211% (77,638 vs 2,345 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; rsyslog is written in C under LGPL-3.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, rsyslog 32%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (elasticsearch), 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 | rsyslog | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 2.3K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 743 |
| 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 rsyslog if
- You want the rsyslog feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and rsyslog 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 rsyslog
Rsyslog – What Is It? Rsyslog is a r ocket fast sys tem for log processing pipelines. It offers high performance, advanced security features, and a modular microkernel like architecture . Originally a regular syslogd, rsyslog has evolved into a highly versatile logging solution capable of ingesting data from numerous sources, transforming it, and outputting it to a wide variety of destinations. Rsyslog can deliver over one million messages per second to local destinations under minimal processing (based on v7, Dec 2013). Even with complex routing and remote forwarding, performance remains excellent. Table of…
read the full rsyslog overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or rsyslog more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and rsyslog has 2,345. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and rsyslog free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and rsyslog under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and rsyslog?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and rsyslog 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 rsyslog?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose rsyslog if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.