head to head · open source
Uptime Kuma vs Grafana Loki
Uptime Kuma has 91,477 GitHub stars, 8,426 forks, 805 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana Loki has 28,909 stars, 4,112 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Uptime Kuma leads on adoption by 216% (91,477 vs 28,909 stars). Uptime Kuma is written in JavaScript under MIT; Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. Uptime Kuma has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Grafana Loki 14%. Uptime Kuma 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
| Uptime Kuma | Grafana Loki | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 91K | ★ 29K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 4.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Uptime Kuma if
- You weight community size — 91K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Grafana Loki if
- You want the Grafana Loki feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Grafana Loki fits your workflow better
About Uptime Kuma
Uptime Kuma is a free, MIT licensed, self hosted monitoring tool with a reactive web dashboard, built for operators and teams that want to watch their own HTTP, TCP, and DNS endpoints and keep the resulting data on their own infrastructure.
read the full Uptime Kuma overview →
About Grafana Loki
Grafana Loki is a log aggregation system designed as the log oriented counterpart to Prometheus. It operates within the cloud native observability ecosystem, specifically targeting Kubernetes and containerized environments. Loki avoids expensive full text indexing by indexing only metadata labels attached to log streams, storing the raw log content in compressed form. This design choice makes Loki significantly simpler to operate and more cost effective than traditional log systems that index every word.
read the full Grafana Loki overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Uptime Kuma or Grafana Loki more popular?
Uptime Kuma has 91,477 GitHub stars and Grafana Loki has 28,909. Uptime Kuma has the larger community by that measure.
Are Uptime Kuma and Grafana Loki free?
Both are open source. Uptime Kuma is licensed under MIT and Grafana Loki under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Uptime Kuma and Grafana Loki?
Uptime Kuma is written in JavaScript and Grafana Loki 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, Uptime Kuma or Grafana Loki?
Choose Uptime Kuma if you want the larger community (91,477 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Grafana Loki if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.