Netdata

Real-time infrastructure monitoring

Best for: System administrators and DevOps engineers wanting free real-time server monitoring with 1-second resolution

Free plan

4.5/5Editorial score 83/100netdata.cloud

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Editorial score83/100

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The editorial note

What to know about Netdata

Netdata is a free, open source, real-time performance monitoring tool that runs on any Linux server and streams infrastructure metrics at 1-second granularity. Unlike Datadog (expensive SaaS), Netdata runs on the monitored server and provides immediate, zero-configuration insights into CPU, memory, disk, network, containers, and hundreds of applications. Its Netdata Cloud provides a multi-server dashboard. Used by 700,000+ engineers for immediate infrastructure visibility.

Is it right for you?

Who Netdata suits

Choose it if

System administrators and DevOps engineers wanting free real-time server monitoring with 1-second resolution

Look elsewhere if

Application performance monitoring (Datadog APM or New Relic handles that better)

What you get

Key features

Real-time metrics
500+ collectors
Alerting
Dashboards
Anomaly detection
Container monitoring
Kubernetes

Works with

Integrations6

PrometheusInfluxDBGraphiteElasticsearchKubernetes Docker

The trade-off

Pros and cons

Pros

Free open source
1-second granularity
Zero configuration
Runs on-device
500+ collectors
Alerting
Anomaly detection

Cons

Limited long-term retention on free
Less polished than Datadog
Noisy alerts by default

Quick read

At a glance

Category: Development & Coding
Pricing model: Freemium
Free plan: Available
Free trial: Not listed
Website: netdata.cloud

The verdict

Our take on Netdata

Best free real-time server monitoring. Netdata's zero-configuration 1-second monitoring turns any server into a fully observable system immediately — no agent tuning, no SaaS bills.

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