Netdata vs Prometheus

Netdata9.0Visit Prometheus8.7Visit

Higher score Netdata #4 in Cloud Monitoring 9.0/10 Free plan · 14-day trial Free planFree trial✓ 0 of 3 features Visit Netdata

vs

Prometheus #7 in Cloud Monitoring 8.7/10 Free plan Free plan✓ 0 of 3 features Visit Prometheus

• Netdata fits best

  Cost-conscious real-time infrastructure teams

• Prometheus fits best

  Teams building open-source metric monitoring

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Side by side

Feature	Netdata 9.0/10 Visit ↗	Prometheus 8.7/10 Visit ↗
At a glance
Editor score	9.0	8.7
Ranking	#4 in Cloud Monitoring	#7 in Cloud Monitoring
Best for	Cost-conscious real-time infrastructure teams	Teams building open-source metric monitoring
Pricing model	Free plan + paid	Free
Starting price	$4.50/unit/mo	Free plan
Free plan	✓	✓
Free trial	14 days	—
Deployment	Cloud, Self-hosted, Desktop, Mobile	Self-hosted
Platforms	Web, Linux, Windows, macOS, iOS, Android	Web, Windows, macOS, Linux
Support	Docs, Community	Community, Docs
Integrations	850+ integrations	8 integrations
Built for	Solo, Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise	Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise
Features Netdata 0/3 · Prometheus 0/3
Kubernetes monitoring	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Serverless monitoring	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Synthetic monitoring	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Specs
Cloud providers	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Metrics retention	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Log retention	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Our review
Pros	Per-second metrics, logs, dashboards, and anomaly detection Hybrid deployment with local storage and centralized cloud access Broad monitoring for VMs, containers, networks, and services	PromQL supports selecting and aggregating labeled time-series data HTTP scraping supports static and service-discovery-based targets Alerting, federation, and remote read/write support broader architectures
Cons	Community supports up to 5 active connected nodes Business pricing requires annual billing Enterprise On-Premise starts at 200 node licenses	Local storage is single-node No SQL query support Horizontal scaling is not verified
Our verdict	Netdata is a distributed observability platform for operations teams, system administrators, DevOps engineers, and SREs. It collects and visualizes infrastructure metrics at one-second resolution, while also covering logs, applications,… Read the review →	Prometheus is an open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit for collecting numeric metrics and storing them as timestamped time-series data with labels. It suits teams monitoring infrastructure, applications, and services, particularly in… Read the review →

Strengths and trade-offs

• Netdata — where it wins

  • Per-second metrics, logs, dashboards, and anomaly detection
  • Hybrid deployment with local storage and centralized cloud access
  • Broad monitoring for VMs, containers, networks, and services

  Where it doesn't

  • Community supports up to 5 active connected nodes
  • Business pricing requires annual billing
  • Enterprise On-Premise starts at 200 node licenses

• Prometheus — where it wins

  • PromQL supports selecting and aggregating labeled time-series data
  • HTTP scraping supports static and service-discovery-based targets
  • Alerting, federation, and remote read/write support broader architectures

  Where it doesn't

  • Local storage is single-node
  • No SQL query support
  • Horizontal scaling is not verified

• Netdata9.0/10 · Free plan · 14-day trial

  A flexible hybrid monitoring platform with strong real-time coverage and a low entry price.

  Visit NetdataFull verdict →
• Prometheus8.7/10 · Free plan

  A strong Prometheus and PromQL foundation for open-source metric monitoring.

  Visit PrometheusFull verdict →