head to head · open source
NetData vs ali
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars, 6,717 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ali has 3,937 stars, 152 forks, 25 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. NetData leads on adoption by 1,964% (81,255 vs 3,937 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 | 2026-11-02 | 2026-01-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.7K | ⑂ 152 |
| 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
X Ray Vision for your infrastructure! Every Metric, Every Second. No BS. Visit our Home Page MENU: WHO WE ARE KEY FEATURES GETTING STARTED HOW IT WORKS FAQ DOCS COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTE LICENSE [!WARNING] People get addicted to Netdata. Once you use it on your systems, there's no going back. WHO WE ARE Netdata is an open source, real time infrastructure monitoring platform. Monitor, detect, and act across your entire infrastructure. Core Advantages: Instant Insights – With Netdata you can access per second metrics and visualizations. Zero Configuration – You can deploy immediately without complex setup. ML Powered –…
read the full NetData overview →
About ali
ali A load testing tool capable of performing real time analysis, inspired by vegeta and jplot. ali comes with an embedded terminal based UI where you can plot the metrics in real time, so lets you perform real time analysis on the terminal. Installation Binary releases are available through here. Via Homebrew Via MacPorts Via APT Via RPM Via Pacman Via APK After enabling the community repo: Via Go Note that you may have a problem because it downloads an untagged binary. Via Docker Usage Quickstart Replace with the target you want to issue the requests to. Press Enter when the UI appears, then the attack will be…
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or ali more popular?
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars and ali has 3,937. 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 (81,255 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose ali if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.