head to head · open source
monolog vs Checkmate
monolog has 21,406 GitHub stars, 1,910 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. Checkmate has 10,830 stars, 1,200 forks, 114 open issues and last shipped yesterday. monolog leads on adoption by 98% (21,406 vs 10,830 stars). monolog is written in PHP under MIT; Checkmate is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. monolog has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Checkmate 11%. Checkmate was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (hacktoberfest), 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
| monolog | Checkmate | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 11K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | PHP | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-09 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick monolog if
- You weight community size — 21K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Checkmate if
- You want the Checkmate feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Checkmate fits your workflow better
About monolog
Monolog is a logging library for PHP that sends log records to files, sockets, inboxes, databases, and various web services. It ships with the handlers, formatters, and processors needed to route records where they belong, and special handlers allow more advanced logging strategies than a single output stream. The library lives in the PHP ecosystem and is distributed through Packagist as monolog/monolog . It is released under the MIT license and has been developed for sixteen years, with more than twenty one thousand stars and roughly nineteen hundred forks on GitHub.
read the full monolog overview →
About Checkmate
Checkmate is an open source, self hosted monitoring application for infrastructure and observability. It is written in TypeScript and released under the AGPL 3.0 license. The repository contains the frontend and backend, and the project sits in the infrastructure monitoring ecosystem for teams that need to track servers, websites, and hardware status without relying on a hosted only product.
read the full Checkmate overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is monolog or Checkmate more popular?
monolog has 21,406 GitHub stars and Checkmate has 10,830. monolog has the larger community by that measure.
Are monolog and Checkmate free?
Both are open source. monolog is licensed under MIT and Checkmate under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monolog and Checkmate?
monolog is written in PHP and Checkmate in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, monolog or Checkmate?
Choose monolog if you want the larger community (21,406 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Checkmate if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.