head to head · open source
monolog vs CocoaLumberjack
monolog has 21,405 GitHub stars, 1,910 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped yesterday. CocoaLumberjack has 13,320 stars, 2,274 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. monolog leads on adoption by 61% (21,405 vs 13,320 stars). monolog is written in PHP under MIT; CocoaLumberjack is written in Objective-C under BSD-3-Clause. monolog has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, CocoaLumberjack 17%. monolog was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (logger, logging), 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 | CocoaLumberjack | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 13K |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | PHP | Objective-C |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| 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 CocoaLumberjack if
- You want the CocoaLumberjack feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Objective-C
- You evaluated both and CocoaLumberjack 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 CocoaLumberjack
CocoaLumberjack is a fast and flexible logging framework, written primarily in Objective C with first class Swift support, for applications targeting macOS, iOS, tvOS, watchOS and visionOS.
read the full CocoaLumberjack overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is monolog or CocoaLumberjack more popular?
monolog has 21,405 GitHub stars and CocoaLumberjack has 13,320. monolog has the larger community by that measure.
Are monolog and CocoaLumberjack free?
Both are open source. monolog is licensed under MIT and CocoaLumberjack under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monolog and CocoaLumberjack?
monolog is written in PHP and CocoaLumberjack in Objective-C. 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 CocoaLumberjack?
Choose monolog if you want the larger community (21,405 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose CocoaLumberjack if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.