head to head · open source
NetData vs tracing
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. tracing has 6,877 stars, 932 forks, 887 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. NetData leads on adoption by 1,071% (80,561 vs 6,877 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 | ★ 6.9K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-05-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 932 |
| 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
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 tracing
tracing is a Rust framework for instrumenting programs to collect structured, event based diagnostic information, and it is aimed at Rust developers and library authors who need observability beyond plain text log lines.
read the full tracing overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or tracing more popular?
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars and tracing has 6,877. 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 (80,561 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose tracing if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.