Kibana vs VictoriaLogs

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

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FeatureKibanaVictoriaLogs
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseAGPL-3.0Apache-2.0
LanguageTypeScriptGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM1,024 MB256 MB
Deploymentdocker, kubernetes, binarydocker, kubernetes, binary
GitHub stars★ 21,230★ 2,118
First released20132023
ReplacesSplunk, DatadogSplunk, Elasticsearch

Why pick each one

Choose Kibana if…

  • Rich visualization options
  • Mature ecosystem
Kibana details

Choose VictoriaLogs if…

  • Very efficient on hardware
  • Fast log queries
VictoriaLogs details

Frequently asked questions

Is Kibana or VictoriaLogs better?

Neither is universally better. Kibana has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are Kibana and VictoriaLogs free and open-source?

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

Can I run Kibana and VictoriaLogs with Docker?

Kibana: yes. VictoriaLogs: yes.

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