head to head · open source
telegraf vs Logstash
telegraf has 17,807 GitHub stars, 5,839 forks, 449 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Logstash has 14,944 stars, 3,496 forks, 2,254 open issues and last shipped yesterday. telegraf leads on adoption by 19% (17,807 vs 14,944 stars). telegraf is written in Go under MIT; Logstash is written in Java under a custom or non-standard licence. telegraf has attracted 33% as many forks as stars, Logstash 23%. telegraf was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| telegraf | Logstash | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 18K | ★ 15K |
| License | MIT | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.8K | ⑂ 3.5K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick telegraf if
- You weight community size — 18K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Logstash if
- You want the Logstash feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and Logstash fits your workflow better
About telegraf
Telegraf is a Go based, MIT licensed open source agent that collects, processes, aggregates, and writes metrics, logs, and other arbitrary data, and it is aimed at engineers who run their own monitoring and observability pipelines.
read the full telegraf overview →
About Logstash
Logstash is a server side data processing pipeline that transports and processes logs, events, or other data. It is part of the Elastic Stack with Beats, Elasticsearch, and Kibana, and it sits in the Infrastructure & Operations / Monitoring & Observability category. The project uses Java and JRuby, and its topics describe it as an ETL framework for logging, real time processing, and streaming.
read the full Logstash overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is telegraf or Logstash more popular?
telegraf has 17,807 GitHub stars and Logstash has 14,944. telegraf has the larger community by that measure.
Are telegraf and Logstash free?
Both are open source. telegraf is licensed under MIT, and Logstash has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between telegraf and Logstash?
telegraf is written in Go and Logstash in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, telegraf or Logstash?
Choose telegraf if you want the larger community (17,807 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Logstash if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.