Grafana Loki vs Grafana Beyla

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?
FeatureGrafana LokiGrafana Beyla
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseAGPL-3.0Apache-2.0
LanguageGoGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM512 MB128 MB
Deploymentdocker, kubernetes, helmdocker, kubernetes, binary
GitHub stars★ 28,687★ 2,083
First released20182023
ReplacesSplunk, Datadog LogsDatadog APM, New Relic

Why pick each one

Choose Grafana Loki if…

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

Choose Grafana Beyla if…

  • Instrument without code
  • Low overhead
Grafana Beyla details

Frequently asked questions

Is Grafana Loki or Grafana Beyla better?

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

Are Grafana Loki and Grafana Beyla free and open-source?

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

Can I run Grafana Loki and Grafana Beyla with Docker?

Grafana Loki: yes. Grafana Beyla: yes.

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