head to head · open source
NetData vs sensu-go
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars, 6,717 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sensu-go has 1,114 stars, 181 forks, 274 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. NetData leads on adoption by 7,194% (81,255 vs 1,114 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; sensu-go is written in Go under MIT. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, sensu-go 16%. NetData was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (alerting, devops), 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 | sensu-go | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.7K | ⑂ 181 |
| 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 sensu-go if
- You want the sensu-go feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and sensu-go 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 sensu-go
Sensu Go CircleCI: Sensu is an open source monitoring tool for ephemeral infrastructure and distributed applications. It is an agent based monitoring system with built in auto discovery, making it very well suited for cloud environments. Sensu uses service checks to monitor service health and collect telemetry data. It also has a number of well defined APIs for configuration, external data input, and to provide access to Sensu's data. Sensu is extremely extensible and is commonly referred to as "the monitoring router". To learn more about Sensu, please visit the website and read the documentation. What is Sensu…
read the full sensu-go overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or sensu-go more popular?
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars and sensu-go has 1,114. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and sensu-go free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and sensu-go under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and sensu-go?
NetData is written in Go and sensu-go 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 sensu-go?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (81,255 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose sensu-go if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.