head to head · open source
NetData vs magic-trace
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars, 6,717 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. magic-trace has 6,345 stars, 222 forks, 70 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. NetData leads on adoption by 1,181% (81,255 vs 6,345 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; magic-trace is written in OCaml under MIT. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, magic-trace 3%. 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 | magic-trace | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 6.3K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | OCaml |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.7K | ⑂ 222 |
| 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 magic-trace if
- You want the magic-trace feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches OCaml
- You evaluated both and magic-trace 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 magic-trace
magic trace Overview magic trace collects and displays high resolution traces of what a process is doing. People have used it to: figure out why an application running in production handles some requests slowly while simultaneously handling a sea of uninteresting requests, look at what their code is actually doing instead of what they think it's doing, get a history of what their application was doing before it crashed, instead of a mere stacktrace at that final instant, ...and much more! magic trace: has 2% 10% overhead, doesn't require application changes to use, traces every function call with 40ns…
read the full magic-trace overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or magic-trace more popular?
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars and magic-trace has 6,345. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and magic-trace free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and magic-trace under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and magic-trace?
NetData is written in Go and magic-trace in OCaml. 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 magic-trace?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (81,255 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose magic-trace if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.