Grafana Loki vs Kiwi Syslog Server
Grafana Loki
grafana.comKiwi Syslog Server
solarwinds.comSide by side
| Figure | Grafana Loki | Kiwi Syslog Server |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $19/mo | $999/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 3 |
| Spec score · Log Management Software | 9.4 (#3) | 8.9 (#14) |
| Deployment options | self-hosted | self-hosted |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | Official documentation lists Grafana Alloy as the recommended collector and describes OpenTelemetry, Promtail, Fluent Bit, Fluentd, Vector, Logstash and other clients. | SolarWinds lists Loggly, Network Performance Monitor, Papertrail, Security Event Manager, and Splunk as integrations. |
| 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. | Kiwi Syslog Server is on-premises software for managing syslog messages, SNMP traps, and Windows event logs. |
Plans
Grafana Loki
- Grafana Cloud Logs FreeFree
- Grafana Loki OSS self-hostedFree
- Loki (self-hosted)Free
- Grafana Cloud Logs Pro$19 a month
- Grafana Cloud Logs EnterprisePrice not published
Kiwi Syslog Server
- Free EditionFree
- Licensed Edition$999 a month
- Kiwi Syslog Server Licensed Edition$999, paid once
In their own words
Grafana Loki
Grafana Loki is a free, AGPLv3-licensed log aggregation system for storing and querying application and infrastructure logs. It can be self-hosted on Linux or accessed through Grafana Cloud Logs plans, with API support and live log tailing. Loki scales horizontally, supports high availability and multiple tenants, and indexes labels instead of log-line contents. LogQL provides queries in Grafana or the LogCLI command-line tool. Grafana describes object-storage support for high-throughput, durable, petabyte-scale retention. Loki can evaluate alerting rules on incoming logs and send results to Prometheus Alertmanager, with native integrations for Prometheus, Grafana, and Kubernetes. Documented ingestion options include Grafana Alloy, OpenTelemetry, Kubernetes Monitoring Helm, Docker, Fluent Bit, Fluentd, and Logstash. Installation methods include Helm, Tanka, Docker, Docker Compose, local installation, and source builds. Cloud plans range from free to paid Pro and Enterprise options.
Kiwi Syslog Server
Kiwi Syslog Server is self-hosted software for collecting and managing syslog messages, SNMP traps, and Windows event logs in a central console. It gathers data from network devices and Linux, UNIX, and Windows systems, with filters for hostname, IP address, priority, time, source, and message text. Rules can send email alerts, run scripts, forward messages, or write logs to files or ODBC databases. Its scheduler can archive and clean up logs, including compressing, encrypting, moving, renaming, and deleting them. SolarWinds lists integrations including Loggly, Network Performance Monitor, Papertrail, Security Event Manager, and Splunk. Kiwi Syslog Server NG supports secure TCP syslog using TLS and certificate-based server authentication. The complete trial runs for 14 days without a credit card. The listed Free Edition is free, but SolarWinds currently marks it “Coming Soon”; it is limited to five network devices, a 500 message buffer, and 10 display windows. The Licensed Edition is listed at $999, paid once.