Grafana Loki
8.7#2 in log management softwareFrom $19 a monthFree planWebAPILinuxSelf-hosted
VisitGrafana Loki vs syslog-ng
What both publish
| Fact | Grafana Loki | syslog-ng |
|---|---|---|
| Documentation depth | The documentation covers architecture, deployment modes, configuration, ingestion clients, operations, multi-tenancy, LogQL, APIs, troubleshooting, upgrades and release notes. | The documentation center contains searchable administration and developer guides, contribution instructions, mailing-list support and GitHub issue tracking. |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Installation | Grafana documents installation using Helm, Tanka, Docker or Docker Compose, local installation, and source builds. | OSE can be installed from Debian/Ubuntu, RHEL, Fedora and Arch packages, official repositories, Docker images or source compilation. |
| Integrations | Official documentation lists Grafana Alloy as the recommended collector and describes OpenTelemetry, Promtail, Fluent Bit, Fluentd, Vector, Logstash and other clients. | The product pages list destinations and integrations including Elasticsearch, Hadoop, Kafka, MongoDB, SQL databases, Redis, Splunk, and SIEM tools. |
| License | Grafana states that Loki is released under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3. | The public project combines LGPL and GPL licensing: core reusable code is generally LGPL 2.1-or-later while many modules are GPLv2-or-later. |
| Limit: learning curve | TrustRadius reviewers report a steep learning curve, difficulty with long-term log insight and a need for better query suggestions and syntax checking. | Capterra reviewers say the configuration syntax takes time to learn, and one reviewer saw little extra functionality over basic operating-system syslog. |
| Purpose | Loki is a log aggregation system designed to store and query logs from applications and infrastructure. | syslog-ng collects logs from infrastructure sources, processes them, and routes or stores them for analysis. |
Grafana Loki plans
- Loki (self-hosted)Free
- Grafana Cloud Logs FreeFree
- Grafana Loki OSS self-hostedFree
- Grafana Cloud Logs Pro$19 a month
- Grafana Cloud Logs Enterprise—
syslog-ng plans
- syslog-ng Open Source EditionFree
- syslog-ng Premium Edition trialFree
- Syslog-ng Basic$2,800, paid once
- syslog-ng Premium EditionPriced on request
- syslog-ng Premium EditionPriced on request
- syslog-ng Premium Edition MarketplacePriced on request
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 syslog-ng if…
You want what its maker publishes above — check its page for the details.