head to head · open source
monolog vs lnav
monolog has 21,401 GitHub stars, 1,920 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. lnav has 10,782 stars, 415 forks, 295 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. monolog leads on adoption by 98% (21,401 vs 10,782 stars). monolog is written in PHP under MIT; lnav is written in C++ under BSD-2-Clause. monolog has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, lnav 4%. lnav 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| monolog | lnav | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 11K |
| License | MIT | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | PHP | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 415 |
| 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 lnav if
- You want the lnav feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and lnav 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 lnav
This is the source repository for lnav , visit for a high level overview. LNAV The Logfile Navigator The Logfile Navigator is a log file viewer for the terminal. Given a set of files/directories, lnav will: decompress as needed; detect their format; merge the files by time into a single view; tail the files, follow renames, find new files in directories; build an index of errors and warnings; pretty print JSON lines. Then, in the lnav TUI, you can: jump quickly to the previous/next error (press e / E ); search using regular expressions (press / ); highlight text with a regular expression ( :highlight command)…
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 lnav more popular?
monolog has 21,401 GitHub stars and lnav has 10,782. monolog has the larger community by that measure.
Are monolog and lnav free?
Both are open source. monolog is licensed under MIT and lnav under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monolog and lnav?
monolog is written in PHP and lnav in C++. 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 lnav?
Choose monolog if you want the larger community (21,401 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose lnav if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.