head to head · open source
NetData vs beszel
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. beszel has 25,459 stars, 1,019 forks, 313 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NetData leads on adoption by 216% (80,561 vs 25,459 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; beszel is written in Go under MIT. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, beszel 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 | beszel | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 25K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 1.0K |
| 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 beszel if
- You want the beszel feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and beszel 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 beszel
Beszel is a lightweight server monitoring platform written in Go and released under the MIT License. It consists of two components: a hub, which is a web application built on PocketBase and provides the dashboard for viewing and managing connected systems, and an agent, which runs on each system being monitored and communicates system metrics back to the hub. The project lives in the self hosted, homelab oriented monitoring ecosystem, alongside the broader category of Infrastructure and Operations tooling, and it is distributed primarily through Docker images published as henrygd/beszel for the hub and henrygd/be…
read the full beszel overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or beszel more popular?
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars and beszel has 25,459. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and beszel free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and beszel under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and beszel?
NetData is written in Go and beszel 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 beszel?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (80,561 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose beszel if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.