head to head · open source
NetData vs perses
NetData has 80,564 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped today. perses has 2,431 stars, 247 forks, 277 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NetData leads on adoption by 3,214% (80,564 vs 2,431 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; perses is written in Go under Apache-2.0. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, perses 10%. 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 | perses | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 247 |
| 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 perses if
- You want the perses 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 perses 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 perses
Perses Overview Perses is first and foremost a dashboard tool that you can use to display a variety of observability data. It currently supports Prometheus metrics, Tempo traces, Loki for logs, Pyroscope for profiling, bringing together all four observability pillars in one place. As the project continues to evolve, it will expand support for additional tools to give users even more flexibility and insight. Perses is a Cloud Native Computing Foundation sandbox project. Beyond its core usage, Perses aims to achieve several broader goals: Open specification for dashboards . Perses is also an initiative to define a …
read the full perses overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or perses more popular?
NetData has 80,564 GitHub stars and perses has 2,431. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and perses free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and perses under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and perses?
NetData is written in Go and perses 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 perses?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (80,564 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose perses if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.