head to head · open source
NetData vs lazyjournal
NetData has 80,564 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lazyjournal has 1,406 stars, 34 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. NetData leads on adoption by 5,630% (80,564 vs 1,406 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; lazyjournal is written in Go under MIT. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, lazyjournal 2%. 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.
← all 13541 open source comparisons
Side by side
| NetData | lazyjournal | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-08-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 34 |
| 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 lazyjournal if
- You want the lazyjournal feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and lazyjournal 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 lazyjournal
lazyjournal is a terminal user interface, written in Go, for reading and filtering logs from journald, auditd, the file system, Docker and Podman containers, Compose stacks and Kubernetes pods, and it is aimed at system administrators, SREs and developers who need to inspect logs from many different sources without leaving the terminal.
read the full lazyjournal 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 lazyjournal more popular?
NetData has 80,564 GitHub stars and lazyjournal has 1,406. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and lazyjournal free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and lazyjournal under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and lazyjournal?
NetData is written in Go and lazyjournal 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 lazyjournal?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (80,564 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose lazyjournal if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.