head to head · open source
NetData vs cost-xray
NetData has 80,564 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cost-xray has 2,046 stars, 202 forks, 13 open issues and last shipped 18 days ago. NetData leads on adoption by 3,838% (80,564 vs 2,046 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; cost-xray is written in Python under MIT. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, cost-xray 10%. 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 | cost-xray | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 202 |
| 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 cost-xray if
- You want the cost-xray feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and cost-xray 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 cost-xray
cost xray is an MIT licensed open source observability proxy for Claude Code and Codex that captures the API traffic those agents actually send and attributes every token and dollar back to the system prompts, tool schemas, MCP blocks, tool results, cache reads and writes, and thinking blocks that produced them.
read the full cost-xray overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or cost-xray more popular?
NetData has 80,564 GitHub stars and cost-xray has 2,046. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and cost-xray free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and cost-xray under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and cost-xray?
NetData is written in Go and cost-xray in Python. 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 cost-xray?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (80,564 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose cost-xray if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.