head to head · open source
beszel vs kubeshark
beszel has 26,812 GitHub stars, 1,143 forks, 313 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. kubeshark has 12,127 stars, 558 forks, 149 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. beszel leads on adoption by 121% (26,812 vs 12,127 stars). beszel is written in Go under MIT; kubeshark is written in Go under Apache-2.0. beszel has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, kubeshark 5%. beszel 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.
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Side by side
| beszel | kubeshark | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 12K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 558 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick beszel if
- You weight community size — 27K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick kubeshark if
- You want the kubeshark 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 kubeshark fits your workflow better
About beszel
Beszel Beszel is a lightweight server monitoring platform that includes Docker statistics, historical data, and alert functions. It has a friendly web interface, simple configuration, and is ready to use out of the box. It supports automatic backup, multi user, OAuth authentication, and API access. Features Lightweight : Smaller and less resource intensive than leading solutions. Simple : Easy setup with little manual configuration required. Docker stats : Tracks CPU, memory, and network usage history for each container. ZFS : Tracks pool capacity, health, and I/O, plus per dataset usage. Alerts : Configurable…
read the full beszel overview →
About kubeshark
Network Observability for SREs & AI Agents Live Demo · Docs Kubeshark indexes cluster wide network traffic at the kernel level using eBPF — delivering instant answers to any query using network, API, and Kubernetes semantics. What you can do: Download Retrospective PCAPs — cluster wide packet captures filtered by nodes, time, workloads, and IPs. Store PCAPs for long term retention and later investigation. Visualize Network Data — explore traffic matching queries with API, Kubernetes, or network semantics through a real time dashboard. See Encrypted Traffic in Plain Text — automatically decrypt TLS/mTLS traffic…
read the full kubeshark overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is beszel or kubeshark more popular?
beszel has 26,812 GitHub stars and kubeshark has 12,127. beszel has the larger community by that measure.
Are beszel and kubeshark free?
Both are open source. beszel is licensed under MIT and kubeshark under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between beszel and kubeshark?
beszel is written in Go and kubeshark 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, beszel or kubeshark?
Choose beszel if you want the larger community (26,812 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose kubeshark if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.