Bunyan is a fast and simple JSON logging library for Node.js applications. It is designed for structured logging, making it easy to search, filter, and analyze log data efficiently. Bunyan provides customizable log output formats, including JSON, human-readable, and machine-readable formats, allowing developers to tailor the logs to their specific needs. It supports log levels, log rotation, and log streams, making it versatile for various logging requirements.
Pino is a fast and lightweight logging library for Node.js applications. It is designed for high performance and low overhead, making it suitable for production environments where logging can impact performance. Pino offers customizable log levels, serializers, and transports, allowing developers to tailor the logging output to their specific needs. It supports structured logging, enabling easy integration with tools like Elasticsearch and Splunk for log analysis and monitoring.
Bunyan has been around for longer and has a solid user base. It has been widely used in production systems. Pino, while relatively newer, has gained popularity for its performance and simplicity. Both packages have a good level of adoption in the logging community.
Performance
Pino is known for its exceptional performance. It is significantly faster than Bunyan due to its asynchronous design and lightweight implementation. Pino has been benchmarked as one of the fastest logging libraries available.
Ease of Use
Both Bunyan and Pino have a similar log format and provide easy-to-use APIs. However, Pino focuses on simplicity and has a smaller API surface. Pino's configuration options are minimal, making it straightforward to set up and use. Bunyan provides more configuration options, which can be useful for advanced use cases but may add some complexity.
Scalability
Pino is designed to be highly scalable. It has a low memory footprint and is suitable for high-throughput logging scenarios. Bunyan is also performant and scalable but might consume more resources compared to Pino in extremely high-volume logging situations.
Integration
Both Bunyan and Pino can be easily integrated into existing Node.js applications. They have various integrations with popular frameworks, libraries, and tools. However, Bunyan has been around longer, so it might have more community-built integrations available.
Maintenance
Bunyan is no longer actively maintained by the original author, but it is still used and maintained by the open-source community. Pino, on the other hand, is actively maintained and frequently updated by its core team. This active maintenance ensures that Pino remains compatible with the latest Node.js versions and keeps up with evolving best practices.