head to head · open source
NetData vs node_exporter
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. node_exporter has 13,785 stars, 2,710 forks, 314 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. NetData leads on adoption by 484% (80,561 vs 13,785 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 | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 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
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 node_exporter
Node exporter is a Prometheus exporter for hardware and OS metrics exposed by \ NIX kernels. It is written in Go and ships with pluggable metric collectors, so the set of measurements it gathers can be tuned per host rather than fixed at build time. The project lives in the Prometheus ecosystem, is published under the Apache 2.0 license, and has been developed for roughly thirteen years, with the repository showing 13,782 stars and 2,708 forks at the time of writing.
read the full node_exporter overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or node_exporter more popular?
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars and node_exporter has 13,785. 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 (80,561 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.