head to head · open source
Apache SkyWalking vs node_exporter
Apache SkyWalking has 24,991 GitHub stars, 6,632 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped yesterday. node_exporter has 13,895 stars, 2,746 forks, 314 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Apache SkyWalking leads on adoption by 80% (24,991 vs 13,895 stars). Apache SkyWalking is written in Java under Apache-2.0; node_exporter is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Apache SkyWalking has attracted 27% as many forks as stars, node_exporter 20%. Apache SkyWalking was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (metrics, prometheus), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Apache SkyWalking | node_exporter | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 14K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 2.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Apache SkyWalking if
- You weight community size — 25K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick node_exporter if
- You want the node_exporter feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and node_exporter fits your workflow better
About Apache SkyWalking
Apache SkyWalking ========== SkyWalking : an APM (Application Performance Monitoring) system, especially designed for microservices, cloud native and container based architectures. Abstract SkyWalking is an open source APM system that provides monitoring, tracing and diagnosing capabilities for distributed systems in Cloud Native architectures. Distributed Tracing End to end distributed tracing. Service topology analysis, service centric observability and APIs dashboards. Agents for your stack Java, .Net Core, PHP, NodeJS, Golang, LUA, Rust, C++, Client JavaScript and Python agents with active development and…
read the full Apache SkyWalking overview →
About node_exporter
Node exporter [ ][quay] [ ][hub] [ ][goreportcard] Prometheus exporter for hardware and OS metrics exposed by \ NIX kernels, written in Go with pluggable metric collectors. The Windows exporter is recommended for Windows users. To expose NVIDIA GPU metrics, prometheus dcgm can be used. Installation and Usage If you are new to Prometheus and node exporter there is a simple step by step guide. The node exporter listens on HTTP port 9100 by default. See the help output for more options. Linux distribution packages On Enterprise Linux (RHEL, CentOS Stream, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux) and Fedora, node exporter is…
read the full node_exporter overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Apache SkyWalking or node_exporter more popular?
Apache SkyWalking has 24,991 GitHub stars and node_exporter has 13,895. Apache SkyWalking has the larger community by that measure.
Are Apache SkyWalking and node_exporter free?
Both are open source. Apache SkyWalking is licensed under Apache-2.0 and node_exporter under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Apache SkyWalking and node_exporter?
Apache SkyWalking is written in Java and node_exporter in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Apache SkyWalking or node_exporter?
Choose Apache SkyWalking if you want the larger community (24,991 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose node_exporter if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.