head to head · open source
monolog vs dozzle
monolog has 21,405 GitHub stars, 1,910 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dozzle has 14,434 stars, 619 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped today. monolog leads on adoption by 48% (21,405 vs 14,434 stars). monolog is written in PHP under MIT; dozzle is written in Go under MIT. monolog has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, dozzle 4%. dozzle 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 | dozzle | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 14K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | PHP | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 619 |
| 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 dozzle if
- You want the dozzle feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and dozzle 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 dozzle
Dozzle is a lightweight, web based application for monitoring Docker logs in real time. It is written in Go and distributed under the MIT license, and it lives in the container and orchestration ecosystem alongside Docker, Docker Swarm and Kubernetes, which its topics and tagline both name. The project ships as a small container — roughly 7 MB compressed — and its user interface is built with Vue.js. It exposes a browser view over logs rather than writing them anywhere: the README states plainly that Dozzle stores no log files and exists purely for live log viewing.
read the full dozzle overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is monolog or dozzle more popular?
monolog has 21,405 GitHub stars and dozzle has 14,434. monolog has the larger community by that measure.
Are monolog and dozzle free?
Both are open source. monolog is licensed under MIT and dozzle under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monolog and dozzle?
monolog is written in PHP and dozzle in Go. 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 dozzle?
Choose monolog if you want the larger community (21,405 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose dozzle if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.