head to head · open source
NetData vs frostmourne
NetData has 80,564 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. frostmourne has 1,494 stars, 317 forks, 31 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. NetData leads on adoption by 5,293% (80,564 vs 1,494 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; frostmourne is written in Java under MIT. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, frostmourne 21%. NetData was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (influxdb), 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 | frostmourne | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-04-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 317 |
| 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 frostmourne if
- You want the frostmourne feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and frostmourne 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 frostmourne
Frostmourne（霜之哀伤监控平台）is an MIT licensed, Java based distributed monitoring and alerting system that turns queries against Elasticsearch, Prometheus, SkyWalking, InfluxDB, MySQL/TiDB, ClickHouse, SqlServer and IoTDB data into alarms, and it is built for operations and development teams that already run a log or metrics stack but lack a matching alerting layer.
read the full frostmourne overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or frostmourne more popular?
NetData has 80,564 GitHub stars and frostmourne has 1,494. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and frostmourne free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and frostmourne under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and frostmourne?
NetData is written in Go and frostmourne in Java. 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 frostmourne?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (80,564 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose frostmourne if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.