Grafana Loki vs SQL Exporter

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 LokiSQL Exporter
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseAGPL-3.0MIT
LanguageGoGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM512 MB64 MB
Deploymentdocker, kubernetes, helmdocker, binary, kubernetes
GitHub stars★ 28,687★ 575
First released20182020
ReplacesSplunk, Datadog LogsDatadog Custom Metrics, New Relic Query Insights

Why pick each one

Choose Grafana Loki if…

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

Choose SQL Exporter if…

  • Extremely flexible
  • Works across DB engines
SQL Exporter details

Frequently asked questions

Is Grafana Loki or SQL Exporter 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 SQL Exporter free and open-source?

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

Can I run Grafana Loki and SQL Exporter with Docker?

Grafana Loki: yes. SQL Exporter: yes.

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