head to head · open source
monolog vs nerdlog
monolog has 21,405 GitHub stars, 1,910 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped yesterday. nerdlog has 1,563 stars, 40 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped yesterday. monolog leads on adoption by 1,269% (21,405 vs 1,563 stars). monolog is written in PHP under MIT; nerdlog is written in Go under BSD-2-Clause. monolog has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, nerdlog 3%. 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 | nerdlog | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | MIT | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | PHP | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 40 |
| 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 nerdlog if
- You want the nerdlog feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and nerdlog 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 nerdlog
Nerdlog is a fast, remote first, multi host terminal user interface log viewer with a timeline histogram that needs no central server, built in Go for engineers who read system logs from several remote hosts at once.
read the full nerdlog overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is monolog or nerdlog more popular?
monolog has 21,405 GitHub stars and nerdlog has 1,563. monolog has the larger community by that measure.
Are monolog and nerdlog free?
Both are open source. monolog is licensed under MIT and nerdlog under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monolog and nerdlog?
monolog is written in PHP and nerdlog 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 nerdlog?
Choose monolog if you want the larger community (21,405 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose nerdlog if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.