head to head · open source
NetData vs cilium
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars, 6,717 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cilium has 25,759 stars, 4,207 forks, 1,085 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NetData leads on adoption by 215% (81,255 vs 25,759 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; cilium is written in Go under Apache-2.0. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, cilium 16%. cilium was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (cncf, kubernetes), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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 | cilium | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 26K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.7K | ⑂ 4.2K |
| 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 cilium if
- You want the cilium 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 cilium 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 cilium
.. raw:: html Cilium is a networking, observability, and security solution with an eBPF based dataplane. It provides a simple flat Layer 3 network with the ability to span multiple clusters in either a native routing or overlay mode. It is L7 protocol aware and can enforce network policies on L3 L7 using an identity based security model that is decoupled from network addressing. Cilium implements distributed load balancing for traffic between pods and to external services, and is able to fully replace kube proxy, using efficient hash tables in eBPF, allowing for almost unlimited scale. It also supports advanced…
read the full cilium overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or cilium more popular?
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars and cilium has 25,759. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and cilium free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and cilium under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and cilium?
NetData is written in Go and cilium 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 cilium?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (81,255 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose cilium if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.