plaso
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Plaso is a Python-based engine used by several tools for automatic creation of timelines to support digital forensic investigators.
Summary
plaso is an open-source, Python-based engine, run from the command line, that parses logs and other artefacts from a disk image or live system and aggregates their timestamped events into a single "super timeline," though it can also produce more targeted, narrower timelines when a full sweep isn't needed. It underpins several other DFIRDFIRDigital forensics and incident response, investigating what happened during a security incident and containing it. The work includes preserving evidence, reconstructing activity and restoring systems. tools and is built for digital forensic investigators and analysts who need to correlate large volumes of log and file data rather than review each source separately. It supports parsers and plugins for formats spanning file systems, browser artefacts, Windows Registry hives, SQLite and ESEESEExtensible Storage Engine, a Microsoft-developed embedded database engine used in Windows components like Active Directory and Exchange; cyber tools use it to read those stores without needing a running service. databases, and text-based logs, and can be extended with custom parsers or analysis plugins. First committed in 2012, it remains active, with 131 contributors and a release in the past 101 days.
Plaso is a Python-based engine used by several tools for automatic creation of timelines to support digital forensic investigators.
How plaso helps
What actually happened on this disk image, in the order it happened?
walks every supported artefact on the image, pulls out every timestamped event it can find, and merges them into a single chronological super timeline spanning file systems, registry hives, browser history and logs at once
Which of the thousands of log entries on this system actually matter to my case?
supports building a narrower, targeted timeline instead of a full sweep, so only events matching a specific collection scope are extracted and aggregated
What happened around the time of this known bad event, across every source at once?
correlates entries from different artefact types by timestamp so events from unrelated logs and files line up on one axis instead of being reviewed source by source
Can I trust a timeline built from a log format nobody wrote a parser for yet?
is built as a framework that lets an analyst add a custom parser or parsing plug-in, so coverage extends to formats outside the built-in set rather than stopping there
Did anything happen on this Windows host that involved the registry, browser, and a database artefact together?
ships parsers for Registry hives, SQLite and ESE databases, and browser artefacts, folding all three into the same aggregated event set instead of separate tools' outputs
How do I turn a repetitive piece of forensic analysis into something repeatable?
can be scripted or extended with one-off custom analysis plug-ins that run against the aggregated events rather than requiring manual review each time
Languages
Command line
| option | found in | since | description |
|---|
Values are placeholders taken from each option’s declared default. Nothing is executed here — the output shown is a recording of a run that already happened.
Score card
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Shipping velocity releases a month, last 12 months
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Documentation quality release-notes rubric, 0–100
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Breaking-change discipline how rarely a release breaks users, and notice given
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Maintenance risk quiet time against its own cadence, maintainers
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Innovation & surface new capabilities, API and MCP surface
- Community health
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Contributor trend distinct committers, this year against last
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Maintainer concentration bus factor now against a year ago
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Issue backlog trend issues closed per issue opened, 12 months
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Responsiveness median time to a maintainer’s first reply
Nine scores for plaso, each built from the releases, notes and API history this site tracks — and, on Researcher and Business, where it stands among every measured tool in its category and how that has moved.
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Blank means never measured; nothing here is a filled-in zero.
Peer standings are included with Researcher and Business. See how this tool ranks against its competitors, using data we don't publish anywhere else.
See plans →Each score is 0–100 on a published rubric, derived from data this site already shows. A dimension we cannot measure says so — it is never scored 0 and never enters a rank.
How this is scored
- Shipping velocity — releases a month over the last 12 months, on a log scale where 16 a month scores 100. Needs 3 releases in the window.
- Documentation quality — the release-notes rubric published on the analytics page, unchanged.
- Breaking-change discipline — the share of releases carrying a breaking change (none scores 100, half or more scores 0). Only projects that label breaking changes are measured: a clean record cannot be told from an unlabelled one.
- Maintenance risk — quiet time measured against the tool's own release cadence (quiet longer than 90 days and three typical gaps scores 0), plus the number of active maintainers and whether contributors are growing, where known. Higher is lower risk.
- Innovation & surface — new capabilities in the feature ledger this year, API and MCP operations added, and the share of commits that are features: the mean of whichever we hold.
- Community health (open-source tools only) — each is a direction, not a size: contributors this year against last, the bus factor now against a year ago, and issues closed per issue opened, where steady scores 50, doubled 100 and halved 0; plus the median time to a maintainer's first reply (an hour scores about 100, a month or more 0). A commercial card has no repository and carries none of the four.
- Documented delivery (commercial tools) — when a vendor's documented new capabilities have slowed against its own baseline, that counts against the overall standing as heavily as two low dimensions. Steady delivery, or too little history to judge, leaves the standing alone; it is never a sixth score.
- Open-source tools are scored on repository signals; commercial tools on their published changelog. Ranks compare tools within one category and one profile and need at least five measured peers; the overall standing needs three ranked dimensions. Best-in-breed or consolidator is a shape, not a quality, and is never scored.
Release-note detail over time
See how much detail plaso puts in its release notes, quarter by quarter, and compare it with tracked tools in the same category. This history uses up to ten retained, reviewed notes per tool; sparse or blank older quarters may reflect that limit.
Checking release-note history…
Coverage
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What plaso connects to, runs on and detects, read from its release notes and docs. So far: 6 new supported platforms.
6 changes, tracked since Oct 8, 2026.
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Oct 82026
new Android app usage history parser
With usage-history.xml
Parser for the Android usage history (usage-history.xml) files.
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Oct 82026
new Apple System Log (ASL) file parser
With asl_log, macos:asl:entry, macos:asl:file
The Apple System Log (ASL) file parser.
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Oct 82026
new Bencoded file parser
With BencodeParser
Parser for bencoded files.
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Oct 82026
new SleuthKit bodyfile format parser
With fs:bodyfile:entry
Parser for the Sleuthkit (TSK) bodyfile format.
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Oct 82026
new Basic Security Module (BSM) event auditing file parser
With bsm_log, bsm:entry
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Oct 82026
new Google Chrome and Chromium Cache file parser
With chrome:cache:entry, ChromeCacheDataBlockFileParser, ChromeCacheIndexFileParser
Parser for Google Chrome and Chromium Cache files.
Operating systems 2
Browsers & mobile 3
Other 9
Nothing first seen in this window. That doesn't mean plaso shipped nothing, only that we found no record of it.
How we count
Read from 1 of 5 release notes and docs updates we hold for plaso. "First seen" is the earliest note that names something; "last" is the latest. Our history may start partway through plaso's life, so an old integration can show a recent first-seen date.
Each change counts once: "added 40 checks" is one line, so the numbers measure how often coverage moves, not how big the catalogue is or how well it detects.
Releases
5 entries
No entries match these filters.
- October 20263
- August 20262
Project health
Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in log2timeline/plaso, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.
- Contributors 27 +19 vs prior 12 months
- Maintainers 1 +0 joined · −0 left, last 12 months
- Bus factor 1 committers behind half the commits
- Community-filed 73% of issues opened, last 12 months
- Median time to close 139 days first maintainer reply 11 hours
- Open backlog 259 of 2,104 issues ever filed
- Issues opened / month 7 · 0 communitymaintainers
- Open backlog 259
- Contributors / month 2
- Commits / month 4
- Stars 2,158
- features 12%
- questions 3%
- other 85%
Counts from the project's public repository and git history; no individuals are identified. Maintainers are the committers covering 80% of the last year's commits. how we measure this
Libraries its release ships
What its latest release locks, checked against known advisories.None of its release's images build from a lockfile we can read.
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