head to head · open source
NetData vs clockwork
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. clockwork has 5,950 stars, 333 forks, 39 open issues and last shipped 20 days ago. NetData leads on adoption by 1,254% (80,561 vs 5,950 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; clockwork is written in PHP under MIT. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, clockwork 6%. 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 | clockwork | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 6.0K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 333 |
| 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 clockwork if
- You want the clockwork feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and clockwork 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 clockwork
Clockwork is a development tool for PHP that gives developers an insight into their application runtime — including request data, performance metrics, log entries, database queries, cache queries, redis commands, dispatched events, queued jobs and rendered views — right in the browser, and this repository contains its server side component.
read the full clockwork overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or clockwork more popular?
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars and clockwork has 5,950. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and clockwork free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and clockwork under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and clockwork?
NetData is written in Go and clockwork in PHP. 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 clockwork?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (80,561 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose clockwork if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.