head to head · open source
NetData vs Grafana Loki
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana Loki has 28,909 stars, 4,112 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NetData leads on adoption by 179% (80,561 vs 28,909 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Grafana Loki 14%. Grafana Loki was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (grafana), 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
| NetData | Grafana Loki | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 29K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 4.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick NetData if
- You weight community size — 81K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Grafana Loki if
- You want the Grafana Loki feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Grafana Loki fits your workflow better
About NetData
Netdata is an open source, real time infrastructure monitoring platform written in Go and released under GPL 3.0, built for operators and lean teams who need per second visibility across Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, and Windows systems.
read the full NetData overview →
About Grafana Loki
Grafana Loki is a log aggregation system designed as the log oriented counterpart to Prometheus. It operates within the cloud native observability ecosystem, specifically targeting Kubernetes and containerized environments. Loki avoids expensive full text indexing by indexing only metadata labels attached to log streams, storing the raw log content in compressed form. This design choice makes Loki significantly simpler to operate and more cost effective than traditional log systems that index every word.
read the full Grafana Loki overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or Grafana Loki more popular?
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars and Grafana Loki has 28,909. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and Grafana Loki free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Grafana Loki under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and Grafana Loki?
NetData is written in Go and Grafana Loki 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, NetData or Grafana Loki?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (80,561 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Grafana Loki if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.