head to head · open source
Grafana Loki vs telegraf
Grafana Loki has 29,111 GitHub stars, 4,169 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. telegraf has 17,893 stars, 5,846 forks, 449 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana Loki leads on adoption by 63% (29,111 vs 17,893 stars). Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; telegraf is written in Go under MIT. Grafana Loki has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, telegraf 33%. Grafana Loki was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (hacktoberfest), 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
| Grafana Loki | telegraf | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 18K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 5.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Grafana Loki if
- You weight community size — 29K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick telegraf if
- You want the telegraf feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and telegraf fits your workflow better
About Grafana Loki
Loki: like Prometheus, but for logs. Loki is a horizontally scalable, highly available, multi tenant log aggregation system inspired by Prometheus. It is designed to be very cost effective and easy to operate. It does not index the contents of the logs, but rather a set of labels for each log stream. Compared to other log aggregation systems, Loki: does not do full text indexing on logs. By storing compressed, unstructured logs and only indexing metadata, Loki is simpler to operate and cheaper to run. indexes and groups log streams using the same labels you’re already using with Prometheus, enabling you to…
read the full Grafana Loki overview →
About telegraf
Telegraf Telegraf is an agent for collecting, processing, aggregating, and writing metrics, logs, and other arbitrary data. Offers a comprehensive suite of over 300 plugins, covering a wide range of functionalities including system monitoring, cloud services, and message passing Enables the integration of user defined code to collect, transform, and transmit data efficiently Compiles into a standalone static binary without any external dependencies, ensuring a streamlined deployment process Utilizes TOML for configuration, providing a user friendly and unambiguous setup experience Developed with contributions…
read the full telegraf overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Loki or telegraf more popular?
Grafana Loki has 29,111 GitHub stars and telegraf has 17,893. Grafana Loki has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana Loki and telegraf free?
Both are open source. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and telegraf under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Grafana Loki and telegraf?
Grafana Loki is written in Go and telegraf 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, Grafana Loki or telegraf?
Choose Grafana Loki if you want the larger community (29,111 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose telegraf if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.