head to head · open source
telegraf vs node_exporter
telegraf has 17,893 GitHub stars, 5,846 forks, 449 open issues and last shipped yesterday. node_exporter has 13,892 stars, 2,743 forks, 314 open issues and last shipped yesterday. telegraf leads on adoption by 29% (17,893 vs 13,892 stars). telegraf is written in Go under MIT; node_exporter is written in Go under Apache-2.0. telegraf has attracted 33% as many forks as stars, node_exporter 20%. telegraf was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (metrics), 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
| telegraf | node_exporter | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 18K | ★ 14K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.8K | ⑂ 2.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick telegraf if
- You weight community size — 18K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick node_exporter if
- You want the node_exporter feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and node_exporter fits your workflow better
About telegraf
Telegraf Telegraf is an agent for collecting, processing, aggregating, and writing metrics, logs, and other arbitrary data. Offers a comprehensive suite of over 300 plugins, covering a wide range of functionalities including system monitoring, cloud services, and message passing Enables the integration of user defined code to collect, transform, and transmit data efficiently Compiles into a standalone static binary without any external dependencies, ensuring a streamlined deployment process Utilizes TOML for configuration, providing a user friendly and unambiguous setup experience Developed with contributions…
read the full telegraf overview →
About node_exporter
Node exporter [ ][quay] [ ][hub] [ ][goreportcard] Prometheus exporter for hardware and OS metrics exposed by \ NIX kernels, written in Go with pluggable metric collectors. The Windows exporter is recommended for Windows users. To expose NVIDIA GPU metrics, prometheus dcgm can be used. Installation and Usage If you are new to Prometheus and node exporter there is a simple step by step guide. The node exporter listens on HTTP port 9100 by default. See the help output for more options. Linux distribution packages On Enterprise Linux (RHEL, CentOS Stream, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux) and Fedora, node exporter is…
read the full node_exporter overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is telegraf or node_exporter more popular?
telegraf has 17,893 GitHub stars and node_exporter has 13,892. telegraf has the larger community by that measure.
Are telegraf and node_exporter free?
Both are open source. telegraf is licensed under MIT and node_exporter under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between telegraf and node_exporter?
telegraf is written in Go and node_exporter 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, telegraf or node_exporter?
Choose telegraf if you want the larger community (17,893 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose node_exporter if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.