head to head · open source
Netbird vs suricata
Netbird has 30,565 GitHub stars, 1,819 forks, 1,512 open issues and last shipped yesterday. suricata has 6,812 stars, 1,783 forks, 86 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Netbird leads on adoption by 349% (30,565 vs 6,812 stars). Netbird is written in Go under a custom or non-standard licence; suricata is written in C under GPL-2.0. Netbird has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, suricata 26%. Netbird 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
| Netbird | suricata | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 6.8K |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.8K | ⑂ 1.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Netbird if
- You weight community size — 31K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick suricata if
- You want the suricata feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and suricata fits your workflow better
About Netbird
Start using NetBird at netbird.io See Documentation Join our Slack channel or our Community forum 🚀 We are hiring! Join us at 🤖 NetBird Agent Network (Beta) Identity aware access control for AI agents — keyless access to LLM APIs and private resources over the encrypted NetBird tunnel. See agent network/ or read the docs at netbird.ai . NetBird combines a configuration free peer to peer private network and a centralized access control system in a single platform, making it easy to create secure private networks for your organization or home. Connect. NetBird creates a WireGuard based overlay network that…
read the full Netbird overview →
About suricata
Suricata Introduction Suricata is a network IDS, IPS and NSM engine developed by the OISF and the Suricata community. Resources Home Page Bug Tracker User Guide Dev Guide Installation Guide User Support Forum Contributing We're happily taking patches and other contributions. Please see our Contribution Process for how to get started. Suricata is a complex piece of software dealing with mostly untrusted input. Mishandling this input will have serious consequences: in IPS mode a crash may knock a network offline in passive mode a compromise of the IDS may lead to loss of critical and confidential data missed…
read the full suricata overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Netbird or suricata more popular?
Netbird has 30,565 GitHub stars and suricata has 6,812. Netbird has the larger community by that measure.
Are Netbird and suricata free?
Both are open source. Netbird has no licence declared in this registry, and suricata is licensed under GPL-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Netbird and suricata?
Netbird is written in Go and suricata in C. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Netbird or suricata?
Choose Netbird if you want the larger community (30,565 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose suricata if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.