head to head · open source
NetData vs cortex
NetData has 80,564 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped today. cortex has 5,863 stars, 877 forks, 343 open issues and last shipped today. NetData leads on adoption by 1,274% (80,564 vs 5,863 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%. cortex 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 | cortex | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 5.9K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 877 |
| 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
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 cortex
Cortex is a horizontally scalable, highly available, multi tenant, long term storage backend for Prometheus and OpenTelemetry Metrics, aimed at platform and observability teams whose metrics workload has outgrown a single Prometheus server.
read the full cortex overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or cortex more popular?
NetData has 80,564 GitHub stars and cortex has 5,863. 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 (80,564 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.