head to head · open source
monolog vs clockwork
monolog has 21,402 GitHub stars, 1,920 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. clockwork has 5,946 stars, 332 forks, 39 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. monolog leads on adoption by 260% (21,402 vs 5,946 stars). monolog is written in PHP under MIT; clockwork is written in PHP under MIT. monolog has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, clockwork 6%. monolog was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (logging, php), 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 | clockwork | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 5.9K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | PHP | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-08-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 332 |
| 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 clockwork if
- You want the clockwork feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and clockwork fits your workflow better
About monolog
Monolog Logging for PHP Note This is the documentation for Monolog 3.x , if you are using older releases see the documentation for Monolog 2.x or Monolog 1.x Monolog sends your logs to files, sockets, inboxes, databases and various web services. See the complete list of handlers below. Special handlers allow you to build advanced logging strategies. This library implements the PSR 3 interface that you can type hint against in your own libraries to keep a maximum of interoperability. You can also use it in your applications to make sure you can always use another compatible logger at a later time. As of 1.11.0…
read the full monolog overview →
About clockwork
Clockwork is a development tool for PHP available right in your browser. Clockwork gives you an insight into your application runtime including request data, performance metrics, log entries, database queries, cache queries, redis commands, dispatched events, queued jobs, rendered views and more for HTTP requests, commands, queue jobs and tests. This repository contains the server side component of Clockwork. Check out on the Clockwork website for details. Installation Install the Clockwork library via Composer. Congratulations, you are done! To enable more features like commands or queue jobs profiling, publish…
read the full clockwork overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is monolog or clockwork more popular?
monolog has 21,402 GitHub stars and clockwork has 5,946. monolog has the larger community by that measure.
Are monolog and clockwork free?
Both are open source. monolog is licensed under MIT and clockwork under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monolog and clockwork?
monolog is written in PHP and clockwork in PHP. 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 clockwork?
Choose monolog if you want the larger community (21,402 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose clockwork if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.