head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs hertzbeat
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars, 4,173 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hertzbeat has 7,452 stars, 1,368 forks, 313 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 291% (29,120 vs 7,452 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; hertzbeat is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, hertzbeat 18%. Grafana Loki was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (grafana), 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 Loki | hertzbeat | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 7.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Grafana Loki if
- You weight community size — 29K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick hertzbeat if
- You want the hertzbeat feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and hertzbeat fits your workflow better
About Grafana Loki
Loki: like Prometheus, but for logs. Loki is a horizontally scalable, highly available, multi tenant log aggregation system inspired by Prometheus. It is designed to be very cost effective and easy to operate. It does not index the contents of the logs, but rather a set of labels for each log stream. Compared to other log aggregation systems, Loki: does not do full text indexing on logs. By storing compressed, unstructured logs and only indexing metadata, Loki is simpler to operate and cheaper to run. indexes and groups log streams using the same labels you’re already using with Prometheus, enabling you to…
read the full Grafana Loki overview →
About hertzbeat
Readme : English 中文 日本語 Home: hertzbeat.apache.org Email: Mail to dev subscribe@hertzbeat.apache.org to subscribe mailing lists 🎡 Introduction Apache HertzBeat™ is an AI powered next generation open source real time observability system. Unified metrics and logs collection, centralized alerting distribution, intelligent management and analysis. No Agent required, high performance cluster, provides powerful custom monitoring and status page building capabilities. Features Integrates collection + analysis + alerting + notification into one platform, with new AI powered interactions and features under HertzBeat…
read the full hertzbeat overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or hertzbeat more popular?
Grafana Loki has 29,120 GitHub stars and hertzbeat has 7,452. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and hertzbeat free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and hertzbeat under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and hertzbeat?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and hertzbeat in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Grafana Loki or hertzbeat?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (29,120 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose hertzbeat if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.