Homer vs Grafana Loki

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted apps from related categories — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

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FeatureHomerGrafana Loki
CategoryDashboards & StartpagesMonitoring & Status
LicenseApache-2.0AGPL-3.0
LanguageVueGo
Setup difficultyEasyMedium
Min. RAM64 MB512 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metaldocker, kubernetes, helm
GitHub stars★ 11,537★ 28,687
First released20192018
ReplacesHeimdallSplunk, Datadog Logs

Why pick each one

Choose Homer if…

  • Extremely lightweight
  • Trivial to host
  • Fast
Homer details

Choose Grafana Loki if…

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

Frequently asked questions

Is Homer or Grafana Loki better?

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

Are Homer and Grafana Loki free and open-source?

Yes. Homer is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Grafana Loki under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Homer and Grafana Loki with Docker?

Homer: yes. Grafana Loki: yes.

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