head to head · open source
monolog vs gofr
monolog has 21,405 GitHub stars, 1,910 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gofr has 20,909 stars, 1,760 forks, 132 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. monolog leads on adoption by 2% (21,405 vs 20,909 stars). monolog is written in PHP under MIT; gofr is written in Go under Apache-2.0. monolog has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, gofr 8%. monolog was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (hacktoberfest, 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| monolog | gofr | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 21K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | PHP | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 1.8K |
| 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 gofr if
- You want the gofr feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and gofr 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 gofr
GoFr is an opinionated Go framework for building microservices, aimed at Go developers and platform teams who want HTTP, gRPC, data access and observability built in rather than assembled from separate libraries.
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Monitoring & Observability projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Monitoring & Observability field.
Frequently asked questions
Is monolog or gofr more popular?
monolog has 21,405 GitHub stars and gofr has 20,909. monolog has the larger community by that measure.
Are monolog and gofr free?
Both are open source. monolog is licensed under MIT and gofr under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monolog and gofr?
monolog is written in PHP and gofr 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 gofr?
Choose monolog if you want the larger community (21,405 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose gofr if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.