head to head · open source
NetData vs stern
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. stern has 4,862 stars, 178 forks, 39 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. NetData leads on adoption by 1,557% (80,561 vs 4,862 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 | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 178 |
| 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
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 stern
Stern is a command line tool that tails logs from multiple Kubernetes pods and multiple containers at the same time, colour coding each result, and it is built for developers and operators who debug workloads on Kubernetes instead of reading pods one at a time.
read the full stern overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or stern more popular?
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars and stern has 4,862. 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 (80,561 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.