head to head · open source
monolog vs debug
monolog has 21,406 GitHub stars, 1,910 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. debug has 11,454 stars, 991 forks, 96 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. monolog leads on adoption by 87% (21,406 vs 11,454 stars). monolog is written in PHP under MIT; debug is written in JavaScript under MIT. monolog has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, debug 9%. monolog was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | debug | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 11K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | PHP | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-09 | 2026-04-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 991 |
| 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 debug if
- You want the debug feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and debug 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 debug
debug is a tiny, MIT licensed JavaScript debugging utility modelled after Node.js core's debugging technique, and it is aimed at JavaScript developers and library authors who want to turn debug output on and off by namespace instead of editing or deleting logging statements.
read the full debug overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is monolog or debug more popular?
monolog has 21,406 GitHub stars and debug has 11,454. monolog has the larger community by that measure.
Are monolog and debug free?
Both are open source. monolog is licensed under MIT and debug under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monolog and debug?
monolog is written in PHP and debug 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, monolog or debug?
Choose monolog if you want the larger community (21,406 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose debug if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.