head to head · open source
monolog vs lazyjournal
monolog has 21,402 GitHub stars, 1,920 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. lazyjournal has 1,437 stars, 35 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. monolog leads on adoption by 1,389% (21,402 vs 1,437 stars). monolog is written in PHP under MIT; lazyjournal is written in Go under MIT. monolog has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, lazyjournal 2%. lazyjournal was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | lazyjournal | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | PHP | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 35 |
| 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 lazyjournal if
- You want the lazyjournal feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and lazyjournal 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 lazyjournal
Terminal user interface for viewing logs from journald , auditd , file system, Docker and Podman containers, Compose stacks and Kubernetes pods with support for log highlighting and several filtering modes. Written in Go with the awesome gocui (fork gocui) library. This tool is inspired by and made with love for LazyDocker and LazyGit. It is also included in Awesome Go, Awesome TUIs and Awesome Docker, check out other useful projects on the repository pages. [!NOTE] You can try it out on the Killercoda playground. Features Simple installation, to run download one executable file without dependencies and…
read the full lazyjournal overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is monolog or lazyjournal more popular?
monolog has 21,402 GitHub stars and lazyjournal has 1,437. monolog has the larger community by that measure.
Are monolog and lazyjournal free?
Both are open source. monolog is licensed under MIT and lazyjournal under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monolog and lazyjournal?
monolog is written in PHP and lazyjournal 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 lazyjournal?
Choose monolog if you want the larger community (21,402 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose lazyjournal if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.