head to head · open source
NetData vs traceway
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars, 6,717 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. traceway has 1,752 stars, 92 forks, 22 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NetData leads on adoption by 4,538% (81,255 vs 1,752 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; traceway is written in Go under MIT. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, traceway 5%. NetData was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (alerting), 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 | traceway | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.7K | ⑂ 92 |
| 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 traceway if
- You want the traceway feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and traceway 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 traceway
Built on OpenTelemetry OpenTelemetry native observability. Open source. Self hosted in 90 seconds. Website · Docs · Cloud · Discord Traceway is an OpenTelemetry native observability platform. It combines logs, traces, metrics, session replay/RUM, exceptions, AI tracing, and on call paging in one place. Point an OTLP exporter at it and you're in business. No Collector, no glue code, no per language vendor SDK. MIT licensed. No BSL. No "open core." Every feature is in the box. Self host it for free, or run it on Traceway Cloud if you'd rather not babysit infra. 👋 Join the Traceway Community on Discord → Chat with…
read the full traceway overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or traceway more popular?
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars and traceway has 1,752. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and traceway free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and traceway under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and traceway?
NetData is written in Go and traceway 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 traceway?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (81,255 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose traceway if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.