head to head · open source
monolog vs loglayer
monolog has 21,402 GitHub stars, 1,920 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. loglayer has 550 stars, 11 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. monolog leads on adoption by 3,791% (21,402 vs 550 stars). monolog is written in PHP under MIT; loglayer is written in TypeScript under MIT. monolog has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, loglayer 2%. monolog was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (logger, 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 | loglayer | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 550 |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | PHP | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 11 |
| 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 loglayer if
- You want the loglayer feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and loglayer 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 loglayer
LogLayer loglayer is a unified logger that routes logs to various logging libraries, cloud providers, files, and OpenTelemetry while providing a fluent API for specifying log messages, metadata and errors. Supports browser, Node.js, Bun, and Deno platforms. For full documentation, read the docs. Also available for Go! See go.loglayer.dev for the Go version. With the Pretty Terminal Transport: The Wide Events Mixin enables comprehensive, self contained log entries that capture an entire operation's context. For background on the problem this solves, see Why Logging Sucks. Development Setup This is a monorepo…
read the full loglayer overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is monolog or loglayer more popular?
monolog has 21,402 GitHub stars and loglayer has 550. monolog has the larger community by that measure.
Are monolog and loglayer free?
Both are open source. monolog is licensed under MIT and loglayer under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monolog and loglayer?
monolog is written in PHP and loglayer in TypeScript. 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 loglayer?
Choose monolog if you want the larger community (21,402 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose loglayer if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.