head to head · open source
NetData vs karma
NetData has 80,564 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. karma has 2,682 stars, 203 forks, 39 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. NetData leads on adoption by 2,904% (80,564 vs 2,682 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; karma is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, karma 8%. NetData was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (alerting), 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 | karma | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 203 |
| 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 karma if
- You want the karma feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and karma 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 karma
karma is an open source alert dashboard for Prometheus Alertmanager, written in TypeScript and released under the Apache 2.0 licence, built for teams that run Prometheus based alerting and find the Alertmanager UI too limited for day to day alert triage.
read the full karma overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or karma more popular?
NetData has 80,564 GitHub stars and karma has 2,682. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and karma free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and karma under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and karma?
NetData is written in Go and karma 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 karma?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (80,564 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose karma if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.