head to head · open source
Grafana vs slog
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped today. slog has 1,708 stars, 98 forks, 57 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Grafana leads on adoption by 4,396% (76,792 vs 1,708 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; slog is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, slog 6%. 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Grafana | slog | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 77K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-06-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 98 |
| 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 slog if
- You want the slog feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and slog 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 slog
Getting started Introduction FAQ Crate list slog rs The Logging for [Rust][rust] You might consider using tracing instead It's been a while since slog was created and it served Rust community well all this time. It remains a stable, featureful and battle tested library, used in many important projects. In last few years, another ecosystem for Rust was created with similar features and a very good support for debugging async code and already larger dev team and community. Please check tracing and see if it is more suitable for your use case. It seems that it is already a go to logging/tracing solution for Rust. Re…
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Monitoring & Observability projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Monitoring & Observability field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or slog more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and slog has 1,708. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and slog free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and slog under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana and slog?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and slog in Rust. 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 slog?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (76,792 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose slog if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.