head to head · open source
NetData vs cortex
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars, 6,717 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cortex has 5,877 stars, 882 forks, 343 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. NetData leads on adoption by 1,283% (81,255 vs 5,877 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; cortex is written in Go under Apache-2.0. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, cortex 15%. NetData 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| NetData | cortex | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 5.9K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.7K | ⑂ 882 |
| 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 cortex if
- You want the cortex 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 cortex 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 cortex
Cortex Cortex is a horizontally scalable, highly available, multi tenant, long term storage solution for Prometheus and OpenTelemetry Metrics. Features Horizontally scalable: Cortex can run across multiple machines in a cluster, exceeding the throughput and storage of a single machine. Highly available: When run in a cluster, Cortex can replicate data between machines. Multi tenant: Cortex can isolate data and queries from multiple different independent Prometheus sources in a single cluster. Long term storage: Cortex supports S3, GCS, Swift and Microsoft Azure for long term storage of metric data. Documentation…
read the full cortex overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Monitoring & Observability projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Monitoring & Observability field.
Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or cortex more popular?
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars and cortex has 5,877. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and cortex free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and cortex under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and cortex?
NetData is written in Go and cortex 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 cortex?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (81,255 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose cortex if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.