head to head · open source
NetData vs OpenObserve
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenObserve has 21,993 stars, 1,091 forks, 598 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NetData leads on adoption by 266% (80,561 vs 21,993 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; OpenObserve is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, OpenObserve 5%. OpenObserve was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (grafana), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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 | OpenObserve | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 22K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 OpenObserve if
- You want the OpenObserve feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and OpenObserve 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 OpenObserve
OpenObserve is an open source observability platform for logs, metrics, traces, analytics, Real User Monitoring, session replay, pipelines, SLO, and LLM observability. It lives in the cloud native infrastructure ecosystem and is described as an alternative to Datadog, Splunk, and Elasticsearch. The project is built in Rust, ships as a single binary, and uses Parquet columnar storage with an S3 native design.
read the full OpenObserve overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or OpenObserve more popular?
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars and OpenObserve has 21,993. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and OpenObserve free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and OpenObserve under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and OpenObserve?
NetData is written in Go and OpenObserve in TypeScript. 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 OpenObserve?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (80,561 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose OpenObserve if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.