head to head · open source
NetData vs stern
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars, 6,717 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. stern has 4,914 stars, 180 forks, 39 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. NetData leads on adoption by 1,554% (81,255 vs 4,914 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; stern is written in Go under Apache-2.0. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, stern 4%. NetData was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (devops, 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.
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Side by side
| NetData | stern | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 4.9K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.7K | ⑂ 180 |
| 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 stern if
- You want the stern 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 stern 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 stern
stern Fork of discontinued wercker/stern Stern allows you to tail multiple pods on Kubernetes and multiple containers within the pod. Each result is color coded for quicker debugging. The query is a regular expression or a Kubernetes resource in the form / so the pod name can easily be filtered and you don't need to specify the exact id (for instance omitting the deployment id). If a pod is deleted it gets removed from tail and if a new pod is added it automatically gets tailed. When a pod contains multiple containers Stern can tail all of them too without having to do this manually for each one. Simply specify…
read the full stern overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or stern more popular?
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars and stern has 4,914. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and stern free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and stern under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and stern?
NetData is written in Go and stern 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 stern?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (81,255 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose stern if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.