head to head · open source
NetData vs eliot
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars, 6,717 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. eliot has 1,189 stars, 75 forks, 120 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. NetData leads on adoption by 6,734% (81,255 vs 1,189 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; eliot is written in Python under Apache-2.0. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, eliot 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| NetData | eliot | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-05-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.7K | ⑂ 75 |
| 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 eliot if
- You want the eliot feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and eliot 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 eliot
Eliot: Logging that tells you why it happened ================================================ Python's built in logging and other similar systems output a stream of factoids: they're interesting, but you can't really tell what's going on. Why is your application slow? What caused this code path to be chosen? Why did this error happen? Standard logging can't answer these questions. But with a better model you could understand what and why things happened in your application. You could pinpoint performance bottlenecks, you could understand what happened when, who called what. That is what Eliot does. eliot is a…
read the full eliot 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 eliot more popular?
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars and eliot has 1,189. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and eliot free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and eliot under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and eliot?
NetData is written in Go and eliot 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 eliot?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (81,255 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose eliot if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.