head to head · open source
NetData vs node_exporter
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars, 6,717 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. node_exporter has 13,892 stars, 2,743 forks, 314 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NetData leads on adoption by 485% (81,255 vs 13,892 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; node_exporter is written in Go under Apache-2.0. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, node_exporter 20%. 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 | node_exporter | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 14K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.7K | ⑂ 2.7K |
| 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 node_exporter if
- You want the node_exporter 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 node_exporter 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 node_exporter
Node exporter [ ][quay] [ ][hub] [ ][goreportcard] Prometheus exporter for hardware and OS metrics exposed by \ NIX kernels, written in Go with pluggable metric collectors. The Windows exporter is recommended for Windows users. To expose NVIDIA GPU metrics, prometheus dcgm can be used. Installation and Usage If you are new to Prometheus and node exporter there is a simple step by step guide. The node exporter listens on HTTP port 9100 by default. See the help output for more options. Linux distribution packages On Enterprise Linux (RHEL, CentOS Stream, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux) and Fedora, node exporter is…
read the full node_exporter overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or node_exporter more popular?
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars and node_exporter has 13,892. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and node_exporter free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and node_exporter under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and node_exporter?
NetData is written in Go and node_exporter 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 node_exporter?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (81,255 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose node_exporter if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.