head to head · open source
NetData vs kindling
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars, 6,717 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kindling has 1,063 stars, 166 forks, 27 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. NetData leads on adoption by 7,544% (81,255 vs 1,063 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; kindling is written in Go under Apache-2.0. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, kindling 16%. NetData was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (kubernetes), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| NetData | kindling | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-07-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.7K | ⑂ 166 |
| 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 kindling if
- You want the kindling feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and kindling 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 kindling
Kindling Visit our Kindling website for more information. What is Kindling Kindling is an eBPF based cloud native monitoring tool, which aims to help users understand the app behavior from kernel to code stack. With trace profiling , we hope the user can understand the application's behavior easily and find the root cause in seconds. Besides trace profiling, Kindling provides an easy way to get an overview of network flows in the Kubernetes environment, and many built in network monitor dashboards like TCP retransmit, DNS, throughput, and TPS. Not only as a network monitor, but Kindling is also trying to analyze…
read the full kindling overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Monitoring & Observability projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Monitoring & Observability field.
Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or kindling more popular?
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars and kindling has 1,063. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and kindling free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and kindling under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and kindling?
NetData is written in Go and kindling 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 kindling?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (81,255 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose kindling if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.