head to head · open source
NetData vs datadog-agent
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. datadog-agent has 3,731 stars, 1,492 forks, 721 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NetData leads on adoption by 2,059% (80,561 vs 3,731 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; datadog-agent is written in Go under Apache-2.0. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, datadog-agent 40%. datadog-agent 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 | datadog-agent | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 3.7K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| 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 datadog-agent if
- You want the datadog-agent 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 datadog-agent 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 datadog-agent
The Datadog Agent repository is the main source repository for the Datadog Agent, which belongs to the Datadog observability ecosystem and is associated with monitoring, metrics, logging, distributed tracing, and profiling. The repository contains source code for Datadog Agent version 7 and version 6, and it points to Agent user documentation for differences among version 5, version 6, and version 7. It also links to prepackaged binaries and developer documentation.
read the full datadog-agent overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or datadog-agent more popular?
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars and datadog-agent has 3,731. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and datadog-agent free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and datadog-agent under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and datadog-agent?
NetData is written in Go and datadog-agent 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 datadog-agent?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (80,561 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose datadog-agent if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.