head to head · open source
NetData vs telescope
NetData has 80,564 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped today. telescope has 5,230 stars, 673 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. NetData leads on adoption by 1,440% (80,564 vs 5,230 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; telescope is written in PHP under MIT. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, telescope 13%. NetData was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | telescope | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 5.2K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 673 |
| 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 telescope if
- You want the telescope feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and telescope 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 telescope
Laravel Telescope is an open source debug assistant for the Laravel framework that surfaces the requests, exceptions, log entries, database queries, queued jobs, mail, notifications, cache operations, scheduled tasks and variable dumps passing through an application, and it is built for Laravel developers who need that visibility while working on an application.
read the full telescope overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or telescope more popular?
NetData has 80,564 GitHub stars and telescope has 5,230. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and telescope free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and telescope under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and telescope?
NetData is written in Go and telescope in PHP. 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 telescope?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (80,564 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose telescope if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.