[opensourcedex]

NetData is a free, open source monitoring & observability project written in Go and released under GPL-3.0. It has 81,255 GitHub stars, 6,717 forks and 393 open issues, and was last pushed 7 hours ago. On this registry it ranks #3 of 270 tracked projects in Monitoring & Observability, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available. It gained 496 stars over the last 30 tracked days.

NetData — Real-time monitoring for systems and applications

What is 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.

What it is

Netdata is a real-time infrastructure monitoring platform that collects, stores, visualizes, and alerts on per-second metrics from the nodes it runs on. It is developed primarily in Go under the GPL-3.0 licence, carries an 80,560-star following on GitHub, and sits in the cloud-native ecosystem as a CNCF-listed project. The README describes a three-part architecture, of which the Netdata Agent is the core monitoring engine handling collection, storage, machine learning, alerts, and exports. A Parent-Child centralization model allows agents to stream to a parent node, scaling from a single machine to multi-cloud fleets. Processing happens at the edge, so data stays local unless it is explicitly centralized.

The concrete problem it addresses is resolution and cost. The project's origin story traces to 2013, when a company where creator Costa Tsaousis served as COO lost a significant share of cloud-based transactions to silent failures. The troubleshooting tools available at the time could not identify a root cause, and the conclusion recorded was that monitoring systems offered too few metrics, at too low a resolution, scaled badly, and cost too much to run. Netdata replaces that class of low-resolution, expensive monitoring setup with a zero-configuration agent that publishes every metric every second, and it is positioned directly against Prometheus in the project's own published comparison.

Key capabilities

  • Collects and processes metrics at one-second resolution, with visualization that requires no query language to slice and dice data.
  • Auto-discovers the workloads and services running on a node, so deployment needs no complex setup or manual metric registration.
  • Trains multiple unsupervised machine-learning models per metric at the edge for anomaly detection and issue prediction.
  • Stores long-term data at roughly 0.5 bytes per sample using tiered storage for archiving.
  • Scales horizontally through Parent-Child centralization, described as handling multi-million samples per second.
  • Keeps data on the operator's premises by distributing code rather than centralizing data, with no central collection required.
  • Covers infrastructure through to applications, with alerting, dashboards, and integrations catalogued under topics including grafana, influxdb, docker, kubernetes, and database.

Who uses it and how

  • Lean operations teams that need full-stack observability without staffing a dedicated monitoring platform group.
  • Docker-based and Kubernetes environments; a University of Amsterdam study cited in the README found Netdata the most energy-efficient tool for monitoring Docker-based systems, with favorable CPU and RAM usage and execution time.
  • Multi-cloud and multi-node estates, where Netdata Agents stream to a Parent for centralized long-term retention.
  • Edge and on-premises deployments that must keep telemetry inside their own boundaries.
  • Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, and Windows fleets, all of which the README names as supported platforms.

Getting started

The README points readers to its own Getting Started section and to the project home page at https://www.netdata.cloud, and the topic list names Docker and Kubernetes among the supported deployment targets.

How it compares

Two comparable tools appear in the project's own material: Prometheus, which Netdata addresses through a dedicated published comparison, and Grafana, listed among the project's topics as an integration surface. The distinguishing claims the README makes are per-second resolution, zero-configuration discovery, and edge-based processing that avoids a central data pipeline.

When to use it — and when not to

A self-hoster runs a Netdata Agent on every monitored node and, for centralized retention and fleet-wide views, operates a Parent node as well, so storage sizing and alert routing are the operator's responsibility. Teams that only want a fully managed hosted service, or that cannot place an agent on each host, should look elsewhere, and anyone embedding the code in a proprietary product must weigh the GPL-3.0 copyleft terms. One honest gap: the supplied material names a three-part ecosystem but details only the Netdata Agent, so the Parent and cloud-side components need separate reading before commitment.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

Netdata Netdata

X-Ray Vision for your infrastructure!

Every Metric, Every Second. No BS.


GitHub Stars
Live Demo Latest release Latest nightly build
Discourse topics GitHub Discussions
CII Best Practices Coverity Scan

User base Servers monitored Sessions served Docker Hub pulls

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.

Platforms

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 – You can detect anomalies, predict issues, and automate analysis.
  • Efficient – You can monitor with minimal resource usage and maximum scalability.
  • Secure & Distributed – You can keep your data local with no central collection needed.

With Netdata, you get real-time, per-second updates. Clear insights at a glance, no complexity.

All heroes have a great origin story. Click to discover ours.

In 2013, at the company where Costa Tsaousis was COO, a significant percentage of their cloud-based transactions failed silently, severely impacting business performance.

Costa and his team tried every troubleshooting tool available at the time. None could identify the root cause. As Costa later wrote:

“I couldn’t believe that monitoring systems provide so few metrics and with such low resolution, scale so badly, and cost so much to run.”

Frustrated, he decided to build his own monitoring tool, starting from scratch.

That decision led to countless late nights and weekends. It also sparked a fundamental shift in how infrastructure monitoring and troubleshooting are approached, both in method and in cost.

Most Energy-Efficient Monitoring Tool

Energy Efficiency Energy efficiency

According to the University of Amsterdam study, Netdata is the most energy-efficient tool for monitoring Docker-based systems. The study also shows Netdata excels in CPU usage, RAM usage, and execution time compared to other monitoring solutions.

Key Features

Feature Description What Makes It Unique
Real-Time Per-second data collection and processing Works in a beat – click and see results instantly
Zero-Configuration Automatic detection and discovery Auto-discovers everything on the nodes it runs
ML-Powered Unsupervised anomaly detection Trains multiple ML models per metric at the edge
Long-Term Retention High-performance storage ~0.5 bytes per sample with tiered storage for archiving
Advanced Visualization Rich, interactive dashboards Slice and dice data without query language
Extreme Scalability Native horizontal scaling Parent-Child centralization with multi-million samples/s
Complete Visibility From infrastructure to applications Simplifies operations and eliminates silos
Edge-Based Processing at your premises Distributes code instead of centralizing data

[!NOTE]
Want to put Netdata to the test against Prometheus? Explore the full comparison.

Netdata Ecosystem

This three-part architecture enables you to scale from single nodes to complex multi-cloud environments:

Component Description License
Netdata Agent • Core monitoring engine
• Handles collection, storage, ML, alerts, exports
• Runs on servers, cloud, K8s, IoT
• Zero production impact		 GPL v3+
Netdata Cloud • Enterprise features
• User management, RBAC, horizontal scaling
• Centralized alerts
• Free community tier
• No metric storage centralization
Netdata UI • Dashboards and visualizations
• Free to use
• Included in standard packages
• Latest version via CDN		 NCUL1

What You Can Monitor

With Netdata you can monitor all these components across platforms:

Component Linux FreeBSD macOS Windows
System Resources
CPU, Memory and system shared resources		 Full Yes Yes Yes
Storage
Disks, Mount points, Filesystems, RAID arrays		 Full Yes Yes Yes
Network
Network Interfaces, Protocols, Firewall, etc		 Full Yes Yes Yes
Hardware & Sensors
Fans, Temperatures, Controllers, GPUs, etc		 Full Some Some Some
O/S Services
Resources, Performance and Status		 Yes
systemd		 - - -
Processes
Resources, Performance, OOM, and more		 Yes Yes Yes Yes
System and Application Logs Yes
systemd-journal		 - - Yes
Windows Event Log, ETW
Network Connections
Live TCP and UDP sockets per PID		 Yes - - -
Containers
Docker/containerd, LXC/LXD, Kubernetes, etc		 Yes - - -
VMs (from the host)
KVM, qemu, libvirt, Proxmox, etc		 Yes
cgroups		 - - Yes
Hyper-V
Synthetic Checks
Test APIs, TCP ports, Ping, Certificates, etc		 Yes Yes Yes Yes
Packaged Applications
nginx, apache, postgres, redis, mongodb,
and hundreds more		 Yes Yes Yes Yes
Cloud Provider Infrastructure
AWS, GCP, Azure, and more		 Yes Yes Yes Yes
Custom Applications
OpenMetrics, StatsD and soon OpenTelemetry		 Yes Yes Yes Yes

On Linux, you can continuously monitor all kernel features and hardware sensors for errors, including Intel/AMD/Nvidia GPUs, PCI AER, RAM EDAC, IPMI, S.M.A.R.T, Intel RAPL, NVMe, fans, power supplies, and voltage readings.

Getting Started

You can install Netdata on all major operating systems. To begin:

1. Install Netdata

Choose your platform and follow the installation guide:

[!NOTE] You can access the Netdata UI at http://localhost:19999 (or http://NODE:19999 if remote).

2. Configure Collectors

Netdata auto-discovers most metrics, but you can manually configure some collectors:

3. Configure Alerts

You can use hundreds of built-in alerts and integrate with:

email, Slack, Telegram, PagerDuty, Discord, Microsoft Teams, and more.

[!NOTE]
Email alerts work by default if there's a configured MTA.

4. Configure Parents

You can centralize dashboards, alerts, and storage with Netdata Parents:

[!NOTE]
You can use Netdata Parents for central dashboards, longer retention, and alert configuration.

5. Connect to Netdata Cloud

Sign in to Netdata Cloud and connect your nodes for:

  • Access from anywhere
  • Horizontal scalability and multi-node dashboards
  • UI configuration for alerts and data collection
  • Role-based access control
  • Free tier available

[!NOTE]
Netdata Cloud is optional. Your data stays in your infrastructure.

Live Demo Sites

See Netdata in action
FRANKFURT | NEWYORK | ATLANTA | SANFRANCISCO | TORONTO | SINGAPORE | BANGALORE
These demo clusters run with default configuration and show real monitoring data.
Choose the instance closest to you for the best performance.

How It Works

With Netdata you can run a modular pipeline for metrics collection, processing, and visualization.

flowchart TB
  A[Netdata Agent]:::mainNode
  A1(Collect):::green --> A
  A2(Store):::green --> A
  A3(Learn):::green --> A
  A4(Detect):::green --> A
  A5(Check):::green --> A
  A6(Stream):::green --> A
  A7(Archive):::green --> A
  A8(Query):::green --> A
  A9(Score):::green --> A

  classDef green fill:#bbf3bb,stroke:#333,stroke-width:1px,color:#000
  classDef mainNode fill:#f0f0f0,stroke:#333,stroke-width:1px,color:#333

With each Agent you can:

  1. Collect – Gather metrics from systems, containers, apps, logs, APIs, and synthetic checks.
  2. Store – Save metrics to a high-efficiency, tiered time-series database.
  3. Learn – Train ML models per metric using recent behavior.
  4. Detect – Identify anomalies using trained ML models.
  5. Check – Evaluate metrics against pre-set or custom alert rules.
  6. Stream – Send metrics to Netdata Parents in real time.
  7. Archive – Export metrics to Prometheus, InfluxDB, OpenTSDB, Graphite, and others.
  8. Query – Access metrics via an API for dashboards or third-party tools.
  9. Score – Use a scoring engine to find patterns and correlations across metrics.

[!NOTE]
Learn more: Netdata's architecture

Agent Capabilities

With the Netdata Agent, you can use these core capabilities out-of-the-box:

Capability Description
Comprehensive Collection • 800+ integrations
• Systems, containers, VMs, hardware sensors
• OpenMetrics, StatsD, and logs
• OpenTelemetry support coming soon
Performance & Precision • Per-second collection
• Real-time visualization with 1-second latency
• High-resolution metrics
Edge-Based ML • ML models trained at the edge
• Automatic anomaly detection per metric
• Pattern recognition based on historical behavior
Advanced Log Management • Direct systemd-journald and Windows Event Log integration
• Process logs at the edge
• Rich log visualization
Observability Pipeline • Parent-Child relationships
• Flexible centralization
• Multi-level replication and retention
Automated Visualization • NIDL data model
• Auto-generated dashboards
• No query language needed
Smart Alerting • Pre-configured alerts
• Multiple notification methods
• Proactive detection
Low Maintenance • Auto-detection
• Zero-touch ML
• Easy scalability
• CI/CD friendly
Open & Extensible • Modular architecture
• Easy to customize
• Integrates with existing tools

CNCF Membership

CNCF Logo
Netdata actively supports and is a member of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).
It is one of the most starred projects in the CNCF landscape.

FAQ

Is Netdata secure?

Yes. Netdata follows OpenSSF best practices, has a security-first design, and is regularly audited by the community.

Does Netdata use a lot of resources?

No. Even with ML and per-second metrics, Netdata uses minimal resources.

  • ~5% CPU and 150MiB RAM by default on production systems
  • You can use the Netdata Monitoring section in the dashboard to inspect its resource usage.
How much data retention is possible?

As much as your disk allows.

With Netdata you can use tiered retention:

  • Tier 0: per-second resolution
  • Tier 1: per-minute resolution
  • Tier 2: per-hour resolution

These are queried automatically based on the zoom level.

Can Netdata scale to many servers?

Yes. With Netdata you can:

  • Scale horizontally with many Agents
  • Scale vertically with powerful Parents
  • Scale infinitely via Netdata Cloud

You can use Netdata Cloud to merge many independent infrastructures into one logical view.

Is disk I/O a concern?

No. Netdata minimizes disk usage:

  • Metrics are flushed to disk every 17 minutes, spread out evenly
  • Uses direct I/O and compression (ZSTD)
  • Can run entirely in RAM or stream to a Parent

You can use alloc or ram mode for no disk writes.

How is Netdata different from Prometheus + Grafana?

With Netdata you get a complete monitoring solution—not just tools.

  • No manual setup or dashboards needed
  • Built-in ML, alerts, dashboards, and correlations
  • More efficient and easier to deploy

Performance comparison

How is Netdata different from commercial SaaS tools?

With Netdata you can store all metrics on your infrastructure—no sampling, no aggregation, no loss.

  • High-resolution metrics by default
  • ML per metric, not shared models
  • Unlimited scalability without skyrocketing cost
Can Netdata run alongside Nagios, Zabbix, etc.?

Yes. You can use Netdata together with traditional tools.

With Netdata you get:

  • Real-time, high-resolution monitoring
  • Zero configuration and auto-generated dashboards
  • Anomaly detection and advanced visualization
What if I feel overwhelmed?

You can start small:

  • Use the dashboard's table of contents and search
  • Explore anomaly scoring ("AR" toggle)
  • Create custom dashboards in Netdata Cloud

Docs and guides

Do I have to use Netdata Cloud?

No. Netdata Cloud is optional.

Netdata works without it, but with Cloud you can:

  • Access remotely with SSO
  • Save dashboard customizations
  • Configure alerts centrally
  • Collaborate with role-based access
What telemetry does Netdata collect?

Anonymous telemetry helps improve the product. You can disable it:

  • Add --disable-telemetry to the installer, or
  • Create /etc/netdata/.opt-out-from-anonymous-statistics and restart Netdata

Telemetry helps us understand usage, not track users. No private data is collected.

Who uses Netdata?

You'll join users including:

  • Major companies (Amazon, ABN AMRO Bank, Facebook, Google, IBM, Intel, Netflix, Samsung)
  • Universities (NYU, Columbia, Seoul National, UCL)
  • Government organizations worldwide
  • Infrastructure-intensive organizations
  • Technology operators
  • Startups and freelancers
  • SysAdmins and DevOps professionals

:book: Documentation

Visit Netdata Learn for full documentation and guides.

[!NOTE]
Includes deployment, configuration, alerting, exporting, troubleshooting, and more.

:tada: Community

Join the Netdata community:

[!NOTE]
Code of Conduct

Follow us on: Twitter | Reddit | YouTube | LinkedIn

:pray: Contribute

We welcome your contributions.

Ways you help us stay sharp:

  • Share best practices and monitoring insights
  • Report issues or missing features
  • Improve documentation
  • Develop new integrations or collectors
  • Help users in forums and chats

[!NOTE]
Contribution guide

:scroll: License

The Netdata ecosystem includes:

Frequently asked questions

Is NetData free to use?

NetData is open source under the GPL-3.0 licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does NetData do?

Real-time monitoring for systems and applications

What is NetData written in?

NetData is primarily written in Go. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/netdata/netdata, and it has 81,255 GitHub stars.