head to head · open source
Uptime Kuma vs lnav
Uptime Kuma has 91,477 GitHub stars, 8,426 forks, 805 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lnav has 10,675 stars, 403 forks, 295 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Uptime Kuma leads on adoption by 757% (91,477 vs 10,675 stars). Uptime Kuma is written in JavaScript under MIT; lnav is written in C++ under BSD-2-Clause. Uptime Kuma has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, lnav 4%. 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Uptime Kuma | lnav | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 91K | ★ 11K |
| License | MIT | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | JavaScript | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 403 |
| 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 lnav if
- You want the lnav feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and lnav 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 lnav
lnav is a log file viewer for the terminal that decompresses, detects the format of, merges, indexes and queries log files in one interactive text interface, built for developers, system administrators and support engineers who diagnose systems from the command line.
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Monitoring & Observability projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Monitoring & Observability field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Uptime Kuma or lnav more popular?
Uptime Kuma has 91,477 GitHub stars and lnav has 10,675. Uptime Kuma has the larger community by that measure.
Are Uptime Kuma and lnav free?
Both are open source. Uptime Kuma is licensed under MIT and lnav under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Uptime Kuma and lnav?
Uptime Kuma is written in JavaScript and lnav in C++. 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 lnav?
Choose Uptime Kuma if you want the larger community (91,477 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose lnav if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.