head to head · open source
Vector vs node_exporter
Vector has 22,589 GitHub stars, 2,286 forks, 2,512 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. node_exporter has 13,792 stars, 2,711 forks, 314 open issues and last shipped 17 days ago. Vector leads on adoption by 64% (22,589 vs 13,792 stars). Vector is written in Rust under MPL-2.0; node_exporter is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Vector has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, node_exporter 20%. Vector 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Vector | node_exporter | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 14K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 2.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Vector if
- You weight community size — 23K stars and counting
- You want the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- 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 Vector
Vector is an open source observability data pipeline written in Rust and licensed under MPL 2.0. It operates as an end to end system for collecting, transforming, and routing logs and metrics within the cloud native monitoring ecosystem. The project is maintained by Datadog's Community Open Source Engineering team, and its topics include agent, cloud native, data transformation, datadog, etl, events, forwarder, logs, metrics, and monitoring.
read the full Vector overview →
About node_exporter
Node exporter is a Prometheus exporter for hardware and OS metrics exposed by \ NIX kernels. It is written in Go and ships with pluggable metric collectors, so the set of measurements it gathers can be tuned per host rather than fixed at build time. The project lives in the Prometheus ecosystem, is published under the Apache 2.0 license, and has been developed for roughly thirteen years, with the repository showing 13,782 stars and 2,708 forks at the time of writing.
read the full node_exporter overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Monitoring & Observability projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Monitoring & Observability field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Vector or node_exporter more popular?
Vector has 22,589 GitHub stars and node_exporter has 13,792. Vector has the larger community by that measure.
Are Vector and node_exporter free?
Both are open source. Vector is licensed under MPL-2.0 and node_exporter under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Vector and node_exporter?
Vector is written in Rust 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, Vector or node_exporter?
Choose Vector if you want the larger community (22,589 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose node_exporter if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.