head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs hertzbeat
Grafana Loki has 28,917 GitHub stars, 4,115 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hertzbeat has 7,398 stars, 1,330 forks, 313 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 291% (28,917 vs 7,398 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 | ★ 7.4K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.1K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| 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
Grafana Loki is a log aggregation system designed as the log oriented counterpart to Prometheus. It operates within the cloud native observability ecosystem, specifically targeting Kubernetes and containerized environments. Loki avoids expensive full text indexing by indexing only metadata labels attached to log streams, storing the raw log content in compressed form. This design choice makes Loki significantly simpler to operate and more cost effective than traditional log systems that index every word.
read the full Grafana Loki overview →
About hertzbeat
Apache HertzBeat is an AI powered, next generation open source real time observability system written in Java under the Apache 2.0 licence, built for teams that need unified metrics and logs collection, centralized alerting distribution, and intelligent management and analysis without deploying an agent on every monitored host.
read the full hertzbeat overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or hertzbeat more popular?
Grafana Loki has 28,917 GitHub stars and hertzbeat has 7,398. 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 (28,917 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.