head to head · open source
NetData vs pup
NetData has 80,564 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pup has 1,014 stars, 120 forks, 12 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NetData leads on adoption by 7,845% (80,564 vs 1,014 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; pup is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, pup 12%. pup 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 | pup | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 120 |
| 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 pup if
- You want the pup feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and pup 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 pup
Pup is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Rust written command line client from Datadog that exposes more than 200 commands across over 33 Datadog product domains, letting AI agents and the humans who supervise them query observability data from a terminal.
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or pup more popular?
NetData has 80,564 GitHub stars and pup has 1,014. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and pup free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and pup under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and pup?
NetData is written in Go and pup in Rust. 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 pup?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (80,564 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose pup if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.