head to head · open source
NetData vs quill
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars, 6,717 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. quill has 3,077 stars, 275 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. NetData leads on adoption by 2,541% (81,255 vs 3,077 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; quill is written in C++ under MIT. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, quill 9%. 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 | quill | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 3.1K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.7K | ⑂ 275 |
| 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 quill if
- You want the quill feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and quill 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 quill
Quill Ultra Low Latency Asynchronous C++17 Logging and Metrics Library 🔬 Try It Online · 🚀 Benchmarks · 📚 Documentation · ⚡ Recipes · ❓ FAQ 🐛 Report Bug · 💡 Request Feature 🧭 Table of Contents Introduction Quick Start Features Performance Usage Design Caveats License ✨ Introduction Quill is an asynchronous logging and metrics library for C++17 and later . It keeps formatting and I/O away from latency sensitive application threads by encoding log arguments on the frontend and processing them on a dedicated backend worker. Low Frontend Latency : Log arguments are encoded and queued for asynchronous…
read the full quill overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or quill more popular?
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars and quill has 3,077. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and quill free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and quill under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and quill?
NetData is written in Go and quill in C++. 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 quill?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (81,255 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose quill if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.