head to head · open source
NetData vs sloth
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars, 6,717 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sloth has 2,566 stars, 232 forks, 25 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. NetData leads on adoption by 3,067% (81,255 vs 2,566 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; sloth is written in Go under Apache-2.0. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, sloth 9%. 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, kubernetes), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| NetData | sloth | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 2.6K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.7K | ⑂ 232 |
| 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 sloth if
- You want the sloth 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 sloth 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 sloth
Sloth Project status Sloth is actively maintained and in continuous development. We’re currently working on internal improvements to make Sloth even more extensible and adaptable to real world use cases. While Sloth already supports custom SLI plugins, upcoming changes will bring more flexibility to how SLOs are generated, making it easier to adapt Sloth to your custom needs. Stay tuned for updates! Introduction Meet the easiest way to generate [SLOs][google slo] for Prometheus. Sloth generates understandable, uniform and reliable Prometheus SLOs for any kind of service. Using a simple SLO spec that results in…
read the full sloth overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Monitoring & Observability projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Monitoring & Observability field.
Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or sloth more popular?
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars and sloth has 2,566. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and sloth free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and sloth under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and sloth?
NetData is written in Go and sloth 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 sloth?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (81,255 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose sloth if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.