Netdata README
The full upstream README, mirrored here for reference. Install config, tool schemas, adoption signals, and an original overview live on the Netdata listing page.
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[!WARNING] People get addicted to Netdata. Once you use it on your systems, there's no going back.
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
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 | Yessystemd | - | - | - |
| Processes Resources, Performance, OOM, and more | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| System and Application Logs | Yessystemd-journal | - | - | YesWindows 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 | Yescgroups | - | - | YesHyper-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(orhttp://NODE:19999if 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.
With each Agent you can:
- Collect – Gather metrics from systems, containers, apps, logs, APIs, and synthetic checks.
- Store – Save metrics to a high-efficiency, tiered time-series database.
- Learn – Train ML models per metric using recent behavior.
- Detect – Identify anomalies using trained ML models.
- Check – Evaluate metrics against pre-set or custom alert rules.
- Stream – Send metrics to Netdata Parents in real time.
- Archive – Export metrics to Prometheus, InfluxDB, OpenTSDB, Graphite, and others.
- Query – Access metrics via an API for dashboards or third-party tools.
- 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
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
- <1% CPU and ~100MiB RAM when ML and alerts are disabled and using ephemeral storage
- Parents scale to millions of metrics per second with appropriate hardware
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
allocorrammode 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
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
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-telemetryto the installer, or - Create
/etc/netdata/.opt-out-from-anonymous-statisticsand 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:
- Netdata Agent – Open-source core (GPLv3+). Includes data collection, storage, ML, alerting, APIs and redistributes several other open-source tools and libraries.
- Netdata UI – Closed-source but free to use with Netdata Agent and Cloud. Delivered via CDN. It integrates third-party open-source components.
- Netdata Cloud – Closed-source, with free and paid tiers. Adds remote access, SSO, scalability.