Like many of you, I spend a lot of time digging through massive structured (mostly JSON) log files. I've always relied on grep for its speed and then piped to jq for the actual filtering, but I find this workflow gets slow and complicated, especially with multi-GB files or complex queries.
LogLens is my attempt to fix this. It's a single, fast CLI tool written in Rust that's designed specifically for structured logs. It combines a simple SQL-like query language (e.g., loglens query './logs' 'level == "error" && status >= 500') with parallel, memory-mapped file processing to be significantly faster than grep | jq.
The Model (Please Read):
This is a closed-source, freemium tool.
Free Tier: The core features (search, query, fields, compress/decompress) are free to use, forever. My goal is for the free tier to be genuinely useful on its own.
Pro Tier: The advanced features (tui, stats, watch, count, etc.) are part of a Pro license.
The Tech: It's written in Rust, using rayon for parallel processing and memmap2 for fast file access. The query engine is a simple, hand-written recursive parser.
I'd be grateful for any feedback you have on the tool, the query language, or the business model.
Website (with demo GIF): https://www.getloglens.com
Docs: https://www.getloglens.com/docs
ifh-hn•3mo ago
Caelrith•3mo ago
You're right, the value isn't just speed—it's about integration. My goal was to build a single tool that replaces the entire grep | jq | awk | tail pipeline.
While Nushell is awesome for general structured data, LogLens is purpose-built for logs with features like built-in percentile stats (stats describe), structured watching (watch --where), and log context (-C 5) that are all designed to work together. The combined use of "query", "watch", and "tui" makes it very fast to pinpoint the exact logs you need.
The free search is the grep replacement, but the Pro tools are where the integrated workflow really shines. Appreciate you checking it out!