head to head · open source
monolog vs swift-log
monolog has 21,405 GitHub stars, 1,910 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped yesterday. swift-log has 4,050 stars, 344 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. monolog leads on adoption by 429% (21,405 vs 4,050 stars). monolog is written in PHP under MIT; swift-log is written in Swift under Apache-2.0. monolog has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, swift-log 8%. 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 | swift-log | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 4.0K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | PHP | Swift |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 344 |
| 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 swift-log if
- You want the swift-log feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- You evaluated both and swift-log 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 swift-log
SwiftLog is the open source logging API for Swift, published by Apple under the Apache 2.0 licence, that gives libraries and applications across the Swift ecosystem a single unified, performant and ergonomic logging interface to code against.
read the full swift-log overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is monolog or swift-log more popular?
monolog has 21,405 GitHub stars and swift-log has 4,050. monolog has the larger community by that measure.
Are monolog and swift-log free?
Both are open source. monolog is licensed under MIT and swift-log under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between monolog and swift-log?
monolog is written in PHP and swift-log in Swift. 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 swift-log?
Choose monolog if you want the larger community (21,405 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose swift-log if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.