OpenObserve vs Grafana Loki
logs and beyond - single-binary object-storage platform vs. Grafana-native label-indexed logs
| OpenObserve | Grafana Loki | |
|---|---|---|
| Summary | Rust-based, columnar, object-storage-backed. Claims 140x lower storage cost than Elasticsearch for logs. | Log aggregation inspired by Prometheus: index only labels, not full text. Cheap at scale. |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | Rust | Go |
| GitHub stars (approx) | 13000 | 24000 |
| Categories | all-in-one, logs, metrics, traces | logs |
| Replaces SaaS | datadog, splunk, elastic | splunk, datadog, sumologic |
| Self-host deployment | single binary, docker, kubernetes helm | docker, kubernetes helm, single binary |
| Commercial hosted option | yes (vendor-run) | yes (vendor-run) |
| Repository | https://github.com/openobserve/openobserve | https://github.com/grafana/loki |
| Freshness checked | 2026-04-22 | 2026-04-22 |
When to prefer OpenObserve
You want a broader self-hosted observability product with logs, metrics, traces, RUM, and session replay backed by object storage from one Rust service. OpenObserve fits teams replacing Elasticsearch or Datadog-style log workflows that also want more than log aggregation.
When to prefer Grafana Loki
You already run Grafana and mostly query logs by labels such as service, namespace, pod, or environment before reading the payload. Loki is the narrower but more established choice for cheap Grafana-native log aggregation when full-text search is not the main workload.