head to head · open source
monolog vs stern
monolog has 21,402 GitHub stars, 1,920 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. stern has 4,912 stars, 180 forks, 39 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. monolog leads on adoption by 336% (21,402 vs 4,912 stars). monolog is written in PHP under MIT; stern is written in Go under Apache-2.0. monolog has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, stern 4%. 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 | stern | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 4.9K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | PHP | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-10-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 180 |
| 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 stern if
- You want the stern feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and stern 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 stern
stern Fork of discontinued wercker/stern Stern allows you to tail multiple pods on Kubernetes and multiple containers within the pod. Each result is color coded for quicker debugging. The query is a regular expression or a Kubernetes resource in the form / so the pod name can easily be filtered and you don't need to specify the exact id (for instance omitting the deployment id). If a pod is deleted it gets removed from tail and if a new pod is added it automatically gets tailed. When a pod contains multiple containers Stern can tail all of them too without having to do this manually for each one. Simply specify…
read the full stern overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is monolog or stern more popular?
monolog has 21,402 GitHub stars and stern has 4,912. monolog has the larger community by that measure.
Are monolog and stern free?
Both are open source. monolog is licensed under MIT and stern under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monolog and stern?
monolog is written in PHP and stern 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 stern?
Choose monolog if you want the larger community (21,402 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose stern if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.