head to head · open source
monolog vs nestjs-pino
monolog has 21,405 GitHub stars, 1,910 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped yesterday. nestjs-pino has 1,540 stars, 109 forks, 12 open issues and last shipped yesterday. monolog leads on adoption by 1,290% (21,405 vs 1,540 stars). monolog is written in PHP under MIT; nestjs-pino is written in TypeScript under MIT. monolog has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, nestjs-pino 7%. monolog was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (hacktoberfest, 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 | nestjs-pino | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | PHP | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 109 |
| 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 nestjs-pino if
- You want the nestjs-pino feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and nestjs-pino 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 nestjs-pino
nestjs pino is a platform agnostic logging module for NestJS, built on Pino, that binds request context into every log line — aimed at NestJS teams that want structured JSON logs without rewriting their existing logging calls.
read the full nestjs-pino overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is monolog or nestjs-pino more popular?
monolog has 21,405 GitHub stars and nestjs-pino has 1,540. monolog has the larger community by that measure.
Are monolog and nestjs-pino free?
Both are open source. monolog is licensed under MIT and nestjs-pino under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monolog and nestjs-pino?
monolog is written in PHP and nestjs-pino 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 nestjs-pino?
Choose monolog if you want the larger community (21,405 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose nestjs-pino if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.