head to head · open source
NetData vs tracing
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars, 6,717 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. tracing has 6,950 stars, 959 forks, 887 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. NetData leads on adoption by 1,069% (81,255 vs 6,950 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; tracing is written in Rust under MIT. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, tracing 14%. 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 | tracing | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 7.0K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.7K | ⑂ 959 |
| 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 tracing if
- You want the tracing feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and tracing 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 tracing
![Tracing — Structured, application level diagnostics][splash] [splash]: [![Crates.io][crates badge]][crates url] [![Documentation][docs badge]][docs url] [![Documentation (v0.2.x)][docs v0.2.x badge]][docs v0.2.x url] [![MIT licensed][mit badge]][mit url] [![Build Status][actions badge]][actions url] [![Discord chat][discord badge]][discord url] [crates badge]: [crates url]: [docs badge]: [docs url]: [docs v0.2.x badge]: [docs v0.2.x url]: [mit badge]: [mit url]: LICENSE [actions badge]: [actions url]: [discord badge]: [discord url]: Website Chat Overview tracing is a framework for instrumenting Rust programs…
read the full tracing overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or tracing more popular?
NetData has 81,255 GitHub stars and tracing has 6,950. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and tracing free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and tracing under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and tracing?
NetData is written in Go and tracing in Rust. 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 tracing?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (81,255 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose tracing if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.