head to head · open source
NetData vs Grafana
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars, 6,717 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana has 77,638 stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NetData leads on adoption by 5% (81,255 vs 77,638 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Grafana 19%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (alerting, data-visualization, grafana, 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 | Grafana | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 78K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.7K | ⑂ 15K |
| 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 Grafana if
- You want the Grafana feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Grafana 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 Grafana
The open source platform for monitoring and observability Grafana allows you to query, visualize, alert on and understand your metrics no matter where they are stored. Create, explore, and share dashboards with your team and foster a data driven culture: Visualizations: Fast and flexible client side graphs with a multitude of options. Panel plugins offer many different ways to visualize metrics and logs. Dynamic Dashboards: Create dynamic & reusable dashboards with template variables that appear as dropdowns at the top of the dashboard. Explore Metrics: Explore your data through ad hoc queries and dynamic…
read the full Grafana overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or Grafana more popular?
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars and Grafana has 77,638. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and Grafana free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Grafana under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and Grafana?
NetData is written in Go and Grafana in TypeScript. 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 Grafana?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (81,255 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Grafana if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.