Open Source / Infrastructure
Log Cannon: An Open-Source Log Aggregation Platform Built to Run at Scale
A self-hosted, open-source alternative to Seq — built to accept millions of log events a day without losing data during an outage.
01
Problem
Teams running Serilog and other structured loggers often end up choosing between paying for a hosted tool like Seq or gluing together their own log pipeline. Neither is a great option when you also need webhook and OpenTelemetry ingestion, and you can't afford to silently drop events if the pipeline hiccups during an outage — which is exactly when you need your logs the most.
02
Approach
- Designed Log Cannon as a self-hosted, open-source drop-in alternative to Seq, purpose-built for Serilog with webhook and OpenTelemetry ingestion paths.
- Put ingestion at the Cloudflare edge so log events are accepted close to the source instead of waiting on a single origin server.
- Buffered incoming events through a queue before writing to ClickHouse, so a downstream hiccup doesn't mean lost logs.
- Built the API and ingestion layer in Go for throughput, with a Next.js front end for search and dashboards.
03
Outcome
- In production, Log Cannon handles 5+ million events per day across multiple platforms.
- Nothing is dropped during downstream outages — the edge-plus-queue design absorbs the spike and catches ClickHouse up once it's healthy again.
- Fully open source, so any team can self-host it instead of paying for a hosted log aggregator.
Stack
GoClickHouseCloudflare WorkersNext.js
Last updated: