head to head · open source
NetData vs kapacitor
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars, 6,717 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kapacitor has 2,378 stars, 475 forks, 834 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. NetData leads on adoption by 3,317% (81,255 vs 2,378 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; kapacitor is written in Go under MIT. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, kapacitor 20%. 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.
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Side by side
| NetData | kapacitor | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.7K | ⑂ 475 |
| 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 kapacitor if
- You want the kapacitor feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and kapacitor 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 kapacitor
Kapacitor Open source framework for processing, monitoring, and alerting on time series data Installation Kapacitor has two binaries: kapacitor – a CLI program for calling the Kapacitor API. kapacitord – the Kapacitor server daemon. You can either download the binaries directly from the downloads page or go get them: Configuration An example configuration file can be found here Kapacitor can also provide an example config for you using this command: Getting Started This README gives you a high level overview of what Kapacitor is and what its like to use it. As well as some details of how it works. To get started…
read the full kapacitor overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or kapacitor more popular?
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars and kapacitor has 2,378. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and kapacitor free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and kapacitor under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and kapacitor?
NetData is written in Go and kapacitor 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 kapacitor?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (81,255 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose kapacitor if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.