Grafana Loki
8.9#1 in log management softwareFrom $19 a monthFree planWebAPILinuxSelf-hosted
VisitGrafana Loki vs Logstash
What both publish
| Fact | Grafana Loki | Logstash |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment options | self-hosted | self-hosted |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Installation | Grafana documents installation using Helm, Tanka, Docker or Docker Compose, local installation, and source builds. | The download page lists Linux x86_64, apt and yum package managers, and Docker containers. |
| Integrations | Official documentation lists Grafana Alloy as the recommended collector and describes OpenTelemetry, Promtail, Fluent Bit, Fluentd, Vector, Logstash and other clients. | Elastic describes turn-key integrations for connecting data sources and ingesting logs, metrics, traces, files, web content, and security events. |
| Live log tailing | Yes | Yes |
| Log pipelines | Yes | Yes |
| Purpose | Loki is a log aggregation system designed to store and query logs from applications and infrastructure. | Logstash is an open source server-side data processing pipeline that ingests data from multiple sources, transforms it, and sends it to a destination. |
Grafana Loki plans
- Grafana Cloud Logs FreeFree
- Grafana Loki OSS self-hostedFree
- Loki (self-hosted)Free
- Grafana Cloud Logs Pro$19 a month
- Grafana Cloud Logs Enterprise—
Logstash plans
- Logstash default distributionFree
Pick Grafana Loki if…
Loki suits teams that need to aggregate and query application or infrastructure logs and can manage a self-hosted deployment or use Grafana Cloud Logs. Its label-based indexing and LogQL are central considerations for selecting it.
Pick Logstash if…
Logstash suits teams that need to collect, parse, transform, and route data through self-hosted pipelines. It may also fit organizations that need plugin-based customization or event queues for failure handling.