mtail vs Quickwit
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted apps from related categories — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Not the right match-up?
mtail
Extract Prometheus metrics from application log files
VS
Quickwit
Cloud-native search engine for logs and traces
| Feature | mtail | Quickwit |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Search Engines |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary, kubernetes | docker, kubernetes, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 4,024 | ★ 11,471 |
| First released | 2015 | 2021 |
| Replaces | Splunk, Datadog Log Metrics | Splunk, Elasticsearch |
Why pick each one
Frequently asked questions
Is mtail or Quickwit better?
Neither is universally better. Quickwit has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are mtail and Quickwit free and open-source?
Yes. mtail is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Quickwit under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run mtail and Quickwit with Docker?
mtail: yes. Quickwit: yes.