head to head · open source
monolog vs eliot
monolog has 21,402 GitHub stars, 1,920 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. eliot has 1,189 stars, 75 forks, 120 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. monolog leads on adoption by 1,700% (21,402 vs 1,189 stars). monolog is written in PHP under MIT; eliot is written in Python under Apache-2.0. monolog has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, eliot 6%. 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 | eliot | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | PHP | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-05-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 75 |
| 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 eliot if
- You want the eliot feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and eliot 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 eliot
Eliot: Logging that tells you why it happened ================================================ Python's built in logging and other similar systems output a stream of factoids: they're interesting, but you can't really tell what's going on. Why is your application slow? What caused this code path to be chosen? Why did this error happen? Standard logging can't answer these questions. But with a better model you could understand what and why things happened in your application. You could pinpoint performance bottlenecks, you could understand what happened when, who called what. That is what Eliot does. eliot is a…
read the full eliot overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is monolog or eliot more popular?
monolog has 21,402 GitHub stars and eliot has 1,189. monolog has the larger community by that measure.
Are monolog and eliot free?
Both are open source. monolog is licensed under MIT and eliot under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monolog and eliot?
monolog is written in PHP and eliot in Python. 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 eliot?
Choose monolog if you want the larger community (21,402 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose eliot if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.