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.
Kibana
Visualization and exploration for Elasticsearch data
VS
VictoriaLogs
Fast and resource-efficient open-source log database
| Feature | Kibana | VictoriaLogs |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 96 · Excellent | 86 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | TypeScript | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 1,024 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, kubernetes, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 21,299 | ★ 2,311 |
| First released | 2013 | 2023 |
| Replaces | Splunk, Datadog | Splunk, Elasticsearch |
What are Kibana and VictoriaLogs?
Kibana
Kibana is a visualization and management interface for Elasticsearch, widely used for log analytics and observability. It provides dashboards, search, and alerting over indexed operational data.
- Log and metric dashboards
- Discover search interface
- Alerting and machine learning
- Maps and visualizations
VictoriaLogs
VictoriaLogs is an open-source log management solution from the VictoriaMetrics team. It offers fast full-text search, low resource usage, and the purpose-built LogsQL query language for analyzing logs at scale.
- LogsQL query language
- Low memory and disk usage
- High ingestion throughput
- Single-binary deployment
Kibana vs VictoriaLogs: key differences
Kibana is written in TypeScript, while VictoriaLogs is built with Go. Licensing differs — AGPL-3.0 for Kibana versus Apache-2.0 for VictoriaLogs. VictoriaLogs is the lighter option, starting around 256 MB of RAM against 1,024 MB for Kibana. Kibana is the more established project (first released 2013), while VictoriaLogs arrived in 2023. Kibana has the considerably larger community, at 21,299 GitHub stars versus 2,311.
Why pick each one
Choose Kibana if…
- Rich visualization options
- Mature ecosystem
Watch out for
- Tied to Elasticsearch
- Heavy resource usage
Choose VictoriaLogs if…
- Very efficient on hardware
- Fast log queries
Watch out for
- Newer and less battle-tested
- Smaller community
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.
Which is lighter on resources, Kibana or VictoriaLogs?
VictoriaLogs has the smaller minimum footprint at 256 MB of RAM, compared to about 1,024 MB for Kibana. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.