head to head · open source
NetData vs quill
NetData has 80,564 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped today. quill has 3,031 stars, 274 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. NetData leads on adoption by 2,558% (80,564 vs 3,031 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 | ★ 3.0K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 274 |
| 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
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 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 processing…
read the full quill overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or quill more popular?
NetData has 80,564 GitHub stars and quill has 3,031. 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 (80,564 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose quill if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.