head to head · open source
NetData vs monolog
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. monolog has 21,406 stars, 1,910 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. NetData leads on adoption by 276% (80,561 vs 21,406 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; monolog is written in PHP under MIT. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, monolog 9%. 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 | monolog | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 21K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 1.9K |
| 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 monolog if
- You want the monolog feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and monolog 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 monolog
Monolog is a logging library for PHP that sends log records to files, sockets, inboxes, databases, and various web services. It ships with the handlers, formatters, and processors needed to route records where they belong, and special handlers allow more advanced logging strategies than a single output stream. The library lives in the PHP ecosystem and is distributed through Packagist as monolog/monolog . It is released under the MIT license and has been developed for sixteen years, with more than twenty one thousand stars and roughly nineteen hundred forks on GitHub.
read the full monolog overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or monolog more popular?
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars and monolog has 21,406. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and monolog free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and monolog under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and monolog?
NetData is written in Go and monolog in PHP. 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 monolog?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (80,561 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose monolog if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.