head to head · open source
huginn vs Logstash
huginn has 49,967 GitHub stars, 4,298 forks, 698 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Logstash has 14,944 stars, 3,496 forks, 2,254 open issues and last shipped yesterday. huginn leads on adoption by 234% (49,967 vs 14,944 stars). huginn is written in Ruby under MIT; Logstash is written in Java under a custom or non-standard licence. huginn has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Logstash 23%. Logstash 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.
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Side by side
| huginn | Logstash | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 15K |
| License | MIT | Custom / other |
| Written in | Ruby | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 3.5K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick huginn if
- You weight community size — 50K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Logstash if
- You want the Logstash feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and Logstash fits your workflow better
About huginn
Huginn is an open source system for building agents that perform automated tasks online, written in Ruby and released under the MIT license. Its agents read the web, watch for events, and take actions on the user's behalf. Internally, agents create and consume events that propagate along a directed graph, which means one agent's output becomes another agent's input and a chain of small steps can be composed into a larger workflow. The project lives in the Ruby ecosystem and is distributed as an official Docker image or installed locally from a forked repository.
read the full huginn overview →
About Logstash
Logstash is a server side data processing pipeline that transports and processes logs, events, or other data. It is part of the Elastic Stack with Beats, Elasticsearch, and Kibana, and it sits in the Infrastructure & Operations / Monitoring & Observability category. The project uses Java and JRuby, and its topics describe it as an ETL framework for logging, real time processing, and streaming.
read the full Logstash overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is huginn or Logstash more popular?
huginn has 49,967 GitHub stars and Logstash has 14,944. huginn has the larger community by that measure.
Are huginn and Logstash free?
Both are open source. huginn is licensed under MIT, and Logstash has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between huginn and Logstash?
huginn is written in Ruby and Logstash 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, huginn or Logstash?
Choose huginn if you want the larger community (49,967 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Logstash if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.