GoAccess vs Grafana Loki

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
FeatureGoAccessGrafana Loki
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseMITAGPL-3.0
LanguageCGo
Setup difficultyEasyMedium
Min. RAM64 MB512 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, binarydocker, kubernetes, helm
GitHub stars★ 20,762★ 28,687
First released20102018
ReplacesGoogle AnalyticsSplunk, Datadog Logs

Why pick each one

Choose GoAccess if…

  • Extremely fast and lightweight
  • Works fully offline
GoAccess details

Choose Grafana Loki if…

  • Cheap to run compared to full-text indexers
  • Familiar Prometheus-style labels
Grafana Loki details

Frequently asked questions

Is GoAccess or Grafana Loki better?

Neither is universally better. Grafana Loki has the larger community, while GoAccess is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are GoAccess and Grafana Loki free and open-source?

Yes. GoAccess is licensed under MIT and Grafana Loki under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run GoAccess and Grafana Loki with Docker?

GoAccess: yes. Grafana Loki: yes.

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