head to head · open source
Grafana vs semantic_logger
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. semantic_logger has 956 stars, 140 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 8,021% (77,638 vs 956 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; semantic_logger is written in Ruby under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, semantic_logger 15%. 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 | semantic_logger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 956 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 140 |
| 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 semantic_logger if
- You want the semantic_logger feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and semantic_logger 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 semantic_logger
Semantic Logger Semantic Logger is a high performance, asynchronous structured logging framework for Ruby and Rails. It differs from ordinary loggers in two important ways: 1. It logs structured data, not just strings. Along with the text message, each log entry can carry a payload (any Hash), an exception, a duration, metrics, and tags. That data is preserved all the way to the destination, so it stays searchable instead of being flattened into text. 2. It logs asynchronously. Log events are pushed onto an in memory queue and written to their destinations by a separate background thread, so your application is…
read the full semantic_logger overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or semantic_logger more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and semantic_logger has 956. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and semantic_logger free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and semantic_logger under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and semantic_logger?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and semantic_logger in Ruby. 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 semantic_logger?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose semantic_logger if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.