head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs kubeshark
Grafana Loki has 28,917 GitHub stars, 4,115 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kubeshark has 12,082 stars, 549 forks, 149 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 139% (28,917 vs 12,082 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; kubeshark is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, kubeshark 5%. Grafana Loki 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
| Grafana Loki | kubeshark | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 12K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.1K | ⑂ 549 |
| 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 kubeshark if
- You want the kubeshark feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and kubeshark 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 kubeshark
Kubeshark is an Apache 2.0, eBPF powered network observability tool for Kubernetes that indexes cluster wide L4/L7 traffic with full Kubernetes context and makes that traffic queryable by AI agents through the Model Context Protocol and by humans through a real time dashboard.
read the full kubeshark overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or kubeshark more popular?
Grafana Loki has 28,917 GitHub stars and kubeshark has 12,082. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and kubeshark free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and kubeshark under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and kubeshark?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and kubeshark in Go. 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 kubeshark?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (28,917 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose kubeshark if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.