head to head · open source
NetData vs telegraf
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. telegraf has 17,807 stars, 5,839 forks, 449 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NetData leads on adoption by 352% (80,561 vs 17,807 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; telegraf is written in Go under MIT. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, telegraf 33%. NetData was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (influxdb), 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 | telegraf | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 18K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 5.8K |
| 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 telegraf if
- You want the telegraf feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and telegraf 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 telegraf
Telegraf is a Go based, MIT licensed open source agent that collects, processes, aggregates, and writes metrics, logs, and other arbitrary data, and it is aimed at engineers who run their own monitoring and observability pipelines.
read the full telegraf overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or telegraf more popular?
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars and telegraf has 17,807. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and telegraf free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and telegraf under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and telegraf?
NetData is written in Go and telegraf 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 telegraf?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (80,561 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose telegraf if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.