head to head · open source
monolog vs nerdlog
monolog has 21,401 GitHub stars, 1,920 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. nerdlog has 1,590 stars, 41 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. monolog leads on adoption by 1,246% (21,401 vs 1,590 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 | 2026-11-01 | 2026-10-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 41 |
| 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 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 nerdlog
Nerdlog Nerdlog is a fast, remote first, multi host TUI log viewer with timeline histogram and no central server. Loosely inspired by Graylog/Kibana, but without the bloat. Pretty much no setup needed, either. It's laser focused on being efficient while querying logs from multiple remote machines simultaneously, filtering them by time range and patterns, while also drawing an interactive timeline histogram for quick visual insight. Primary use case: reading system logs (from the files /var/log/messages or /var/log/syslog , or straight from journalctl ) from one or more remote hosts. Very efficient even on large…
read the full nerdlog overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is monolog or nerdlog more popular?
monolog has 21,401 GitHub stars and nerdlog has 1,590. 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 (21,401 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose nerdlog if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.