head to head · open source
NetData vs jaeger
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jaeger has 23,217 stars, 3,119 forks, 547 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. NetData leads on adoption by 247% (80,561 vs 23,217 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; jaeger is written in Go under Apache-2.0. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, jaeger 13%. NetData was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (cncf), 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 | jaeger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 23K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 3.1K |
| 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 jaeger if
- You want the jaeger 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 jaeger 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 jaeger
Jaeger is a distributed tracing platform hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), where it graduated as the 7th top level project in October 2019. It was originally created by Uber Technologies and then donated to the CNCF. The project is written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license, and it lives in the OpenTelemetry and observability ecosystem: it consumes traces from OpenTelemetry SDKs and reuses components from the OpenTelemetry Collector. Its repository carries topics including cncf, distributed tracing, jaeger, observability, opentelemetry and tracing, and the project is openly gove…
read the full jaeger overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or jaeger more popular?
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars and jaeger has 23,217. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and jaeger free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and jaeger under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and jaeger?
NetData is written in Go and jaeger 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 jaeger?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (80,561 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose jaeger if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.