What is Grafana Loki used for?

Grafana Loki is a horizontally scalable log aggregation system that indexes labels instead of log contents, inspired by Prometheus. It is a good fit for centralized logs for Kubernetes clusters, and correlating metrics and logs in Grafana.

Is Grafana Loki open source?

Yes. Grafana Loki is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at grafana/loki and is written mainly in Go.

Is Grafana Loki free?

Yes. Grafana Loki is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available.

Can I self-host Grafana Loki?

Yes. Grafana Loki can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Grafana Loki an alternative to?

Grafana Loki is an open-source alternative to Datadog, Splunk, Sumo Logic and Papertrail. Other open-source alternatives to Datadog include OpenObserve, SigNoz and HyperDX.

Is Grafana Loki actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Grafana Loki was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v3.7.8, published on 17 September 2026. The project has 29k stars on GitHub.

Grafana Loki: open-source alternative to Datadog, Splunk

About Grafana Loki

Loki is a log aggregation system from Grafana, described as Prometheus for logs. It is horizontally scalable, highly available and multi-tenant. Instead of indexing the contents of log lines, it indexes a set of labels for each log stream and stores the compressed log text, which the project says makes it simpler to operate and cheaper to run. It is written in Go and released under the AGPL-3.0 license.

Because Loki reuses the labels familiar from Prometheus, you can move between metrics and logs using the same label sets, and it has native support in Grafana. It works especially well for Kubernetes pod logs, since metadata such as pod labels is scraped and indexed automatically. A typical stack has three parts: Alloy as the collection agent, Loki for storage and queries, and Grafana for exploration. Alloy replaces Promtail, which is considered feature complete. Unlike Prometheus, Loki receives logs by push.

Key features

Label-based indexing instead of full-text indexing
Horizontally scalable, multi-tenant architecture
Native Grafana integration for querying logs
Automatic Kubernetes pod label indexing
Grafana Alloy agent for log collection
Single-binary deployment option

Good fit for

→Centralized logs for Kubernetes clusters
→Correlating metrics and logs in Grafana

Built with: Go
Tags: logging; log-aggregation; grafana; prometheus; observability; kubernetes; golang; monitoring

Grafana Loki: questions and answers

What is Grafana Loki used for?: Grafana Loki is a horizontally scalable log aggregation system that indexes labels instead of log contents, inspired by Prometheus. It is a good fit for centralized logs for Kubernetes clusters, and correlating metrics and logs in Grafana.
Is Grafana Loki open source?: Yes. Grafana Loki is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at grafana/loki and is written mainly in Go.
Is Grafana Loki free?: Yes. Grafana Loki is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available.
Can I self-host Grafana Loki?: Yes. Grafana Loki can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Grafana Loki an alternative to?: Grafana Loki is an open-source alternative to Datadog, Splunk, Sumo Logic and Papertrail. Other open-source alternatives to Datadog include OpenObserve, SigNoz and HyperDX.
Is Grafana Loki actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Grafana Loki was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v3.7.8, published on 17 September 2026. The project has 29k stars on GitHub.