Loki
February 22, 2026
What it is
Loki is a log aggregation system from Grafana Labs. It indexes labels (not full text) for efficiency; query with LogQL. Designed to pair with Prometheus and Grafana.
Usage
Ship logs from apps and infra; query in Grafana; correlate with metrics; lower cost than full-text indexing.
Pros and cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Label-based; cost-effective | Less flexible full-text search than Elasticsearch |
| LogQL and Grafana integration | |
| Scales with same patterns as Prometheus | |
| Good for K8s and containers |
Alternatives
Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, Vector + storage. Why Loki: Prometheus-style labels and Grafana-native; good for metrics + logs in one place.
Links
- Homepage: https://grafana.com/oss/loki/
- Documentation: https://grafana.com/docs/loki/
- Source: https://github.com/grafana/loki