head to head · open source
NetData vs Grafana Loki
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars, 6,717 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana Loki has 29,111 stars, 4,169 forks, 1,620 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NetData leads on adoption by 179% (81,255 vs 29,111 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; Grafana Loki is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Grafana Loki 14%. Grafana Loki was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (grafana), 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 Loki | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 29K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.7K | ⑂ 4.2K |
| 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 Loki if
- You want the Grafana Loki feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Grafana Loki 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 Loki
Loki: like Prometheus, but for logs. Loki is a horizontally scalable, highly available, multi tenant log aggregation system inspired by Prometheus. It is designed to be very cost effective and easy to operate. It does not index the contents of the logs, but rather a set of labels for each log stream. Compared to other log aggregation systems, Loki: does not do full text indexing on logs. By storing compressed, unstructured logs and only indexing metadata, Loki is simpler to operate and cheaper to run. indexes and groups log streams using the same labels you’re already using with Prometheus, enabling you to…
read the full Grafana Loki overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or Grafana Loki more popular?
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars and Grafana Loki has 29,111. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and Grafana Loki free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Grafana Loki under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and Grafana Loki?
NetData is written in Go and Grafana Loki 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 Grafana Loki?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (81,255 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Grafana Loki if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.