head to head · open source
huginn vs node_exporter
huginn has 50,269 GitHub stars, 4,339 forks, 698 open issues and last shipped yesterday. node_exporter has 13,892 stars, 2,743 forks, 314 open issues and last shipped yesterday. huginn leads on adoption by 262% (50,269 vs 13,892 stars). huginn is written in Ruby under MIT; node_exporter is written in Go under Apache-2.0. huginn has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, node_exporter 20%. node_exporter was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| huginn | node_exporter | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 14K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 2.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick huginn if
- You weight community size — 50K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- 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 huginn
What is Huginn? Huginn is a system for building agents that perform automated tasks for you online. They can read the web, watch for events, and take actions on your behalf. Huginn's Agents create and consume events, propagating them along a directed graph. Think of it as a hackable version of IFTTT or Zapier on your own server. You always know who has your data. You do. Here are some of the things that you can do with Huginn: Track the weather and get an email when it's going to rain (or snow) tomorrow ("Don't forget your umbrella!") List terms that you care about and receive email when their occurrence on…
read the full huginn 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 →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Monitoring & Observability projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Monitoring & Observability field.
Frequently asked questions
Is huginn or node_exporter more popular?
huginn has 50,269 GitHub stars and node_exporter has 13,892. huginn has the larger community by that measure.
Are huginn and node_exporter free?
Both are open source. huginn is licensed under MIT and node_exporter under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between huginn and node_exporter?
huginn is written in Ruby 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, huginn or node_exporter?
Choose huginn if you want the larger community (50,269 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose node_exporter if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.