head to head · open source
huginn vs rsyslog
huginn has 49,969 GitHub stars, 4,299 forks, 698 open issues and last shipped today. rsyslog has 2,336 stars, 736 forks, 207 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. huginn leads on adoption by 2,039% (49,969 vs 2,336 stars). huginn is written in Ruby under MIT; rsyslog is written in C under LGPL-3.0. huginn has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, rsyslog 32%. huginn 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 | rsyslog | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 2.3K |
| License | MIT | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 736 |
| 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 rsyslog if
- You want the rsyslog feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and rsyslog 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 rsyslog
Rsyslog – What Is It? Rsyslog is a r ocket fast sys tem for log processing pipelines. It offers high performance, advanced security features, and a modular microkernel like architecture . Originally a regular syslogd, rsyslog has evolved into a highly versatile logging solution capable of ingesting data from numerous sources, transforming it, and outputting it to a wide variety of destinations. Rsyslog can deliver over one million messages per second to local destinations under minimal processing (based on v7, Dec 2013). Even with complex routing and remote forwarding, performance remains excellent. Table of Cont…
read the full rsyslog overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is huginn or rsyslog more popular?
huginn has 49,969 GitHub stars and rsyslog has 2,336. huginn has the larger community by that measure.
Are huginn and rsyslog free?
Both are open source. huginn is licensed under MIT and rsyslog under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between huginn and rsyslog?
huginn is written in Ruby and rsyslog in C. 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 rsyslog?
Choose huginn if you want the larger community (49,969 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose rsyslog if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.