head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs metrics
Grafana Loki has 29,111 GitHub stars, 4,169 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. metrics has 17,365 stars, 2,300 forks, 68 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 68% (29,111 vs 17,365 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; metrics is written in JavaScript under MIT. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, metrics 13%. 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 | metrics | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 17K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-05-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| 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 metrics if
- You want the metrics feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and metrics 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 metrics
📊 Metrics Generate metrics that can be embedded everywhere, including your GitHub profile readme! Supports users, organizations, and even repositories! For user accounts For organization accounts 🧩 Customizable with 47 plugins and 335 options! 📅 Isometric commit calendar 🈷️ Languages activity Full year calendar Half year calendar Indepth analysis (clone and analyze repositories) Recently used (analyze recent activity events) Default algorithm Default algorithm (with details) ✨ Stargazers 👨💻 Lines of code changed Classic charts Graph charts Worldmap Repositories and diff history Compact display in base…
read the full metrics overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or metrics more popular?
Grafana Loki has 29,111 GitHub stars and metrics has 17,365. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and metrics free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and metrics under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and metrics?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and metrics in JavaScript. 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 metrics?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (29,111 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose metrics if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.