head to head · open source
NetData vs NLog
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NLog has 6,546 stars, 1,379 forks, 50 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. NetData leads on adoption by 1,131% (80,561 vs 6,546 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; NLog is written in C# under BSD-3-Clause. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, NLog 21%. 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 | NLog | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Go | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 NLog if
- You want the NLog feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and NLog 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 NLog
NLog is a free logging platform for .NET, distributed under the BSD 3 Clause license and maintained in the NLog/NLog repository on GitHub. It provides rich log routing and management capabilities, so an application can produce and manage high quality logs regardless of its size or complexity. It lives in the .NET ecosystem, is written in C , and targets cross platform use across .NET Framework, .NET Core, ASP.NET Core, MAUI, and Mono. The project has been developed for fourteen years and is published as the NLog package on NuGet, with the current 6.0 line adding AOT support.
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or NLog more popular?
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars and NLog has 6,546. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and NLog free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and NLog under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and NLog?
NetData is written in Go and NLog in C#. 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 NLog?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (80,561 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose NLog if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.