head to head · open source
NetData vs ali
NetData has 80,564 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ali has 3,939 stars, 151 forks, 25 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. NetData leads on adoption by 1,945% (80,564 vs 3,939 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; ali is written in Go under MIT. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, ali 4%. NetData 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
| NetData | ali | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 3.9K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-01-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 151 |
| 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 ali if
- You want the ali feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and ali 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 ali
ali is a Go command line load testing tool that generates HTTP traffic against a target and plots the resulting metrics live in an embedded terminal UI, built for developers and operators who need to watch how a service behaves while the load is still running instead of reading a report afterwards.
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or ali more popular?
NetData has 80,564 GitHub stars and ali has 3,939. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and ali free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and ali under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and ali?
NetData is written in Go and ali 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 ali?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (80,564 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose ali if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.