What are the best .NET logging frameworks?

Question

5

Options
Considered

144

User
Recs.

Oct 14, 2020

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

The Best 1 of 5 OptionsWhy?

Best .NET logging frameworks	Price	Last Updated
92 NLog	Free	Oct 14, 2020
80 Serilog	-	Oct 2, 2020
72 log4net	Free	Mar 20, 2020
-- Retrace	$99 p/month	Feb 27, 2020
-- BitFactory	-	May 19, 2015

See Full List

4 Other Options Considered

Serilog

Top Pro

Can log structured data

Top Con

Documentation is distributed among plugins

Determining what logger, formatter, option is more difficult because documentation is associated with each component. See More

Suyash Gupta's Experience

Great framework with awesome documentation See More

Top Pro

Flexible configuration options

Configuring directly or using appsettings is fairly and there are many examples available. See More

Top Pro

Multiple extensions

You can easily configure it to log into Console / File / Seq / ElasticSearch / etc. See More

Top Pro

Log Enricher and Log Context features

Easily and extensibly enrich your log messages with contextual information such as thread or request ID. See More

Top Pro

Is portable between recent .NET platforms

See All

log4net

Top Con

Dealing with errors can be a pain

Because of the poor documentation and difficulty of configuration you might end up spending a lot of time just trying to fix things that aren't working. See More

Top Pro

Supports Multiple Frameworks

Top Con

Confusing Documentation

Documentation is quite difficult to navigate through unless you know exactly what you're looking for. See More

Top Pro

Robust

Has all the features you'll most likely need, and is quite configurable. Basically what you'd expect from a very popular and widely-used framework. See More

Top Pro

Modular and Extendable

Has plugins for most of the things you'll need to get done without having to deal with too much unnecessary functionality. See More

Top Pro

Widely Used

Using log4net is a safe bet - many other open-source projects use it as well and it'll be just another dependency you don't have to worry about. This also means finding support to fix bugs is a lot easier! See More

See All

Retrace

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What are the best .NET logging frameworks?

The Best 1 of 5 OptionsWhy?

NLog

My Recommendation for NLog

My Recommendation for NLog

Easily configurable

Easy to set up

Supports Semantic Logging

4 Other Options Considered

Serilog

My Recommendation for Serilog

My Recommendation for Serilog

Can log structured data

Documentation is distributed among plugins

Flexible configuration options

Multiple extensions

Log Enricher and Log Context features

Is portable between recent .NET platforms

log4net

My Recommendation for log4net

My Recommendation for log4net

Dealing with errors can be a pain

Supports Multiple Frameworks

Confusing Documentation

Robust

Modular and Extendable

Widely Used

Retrace

My Recommendation for Retrace

My Recommendation for Retrace

BitFactory

My Recommendation for BitFactory

My Recommendation for BitFactory

Stupid Simple to Use

Bloat-Free

Lightweight and Solid

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