Top 5 Best Netdata Alternatives in 2025

Netdata is a well-known open-source monitoring platform. Its edge-first, distributed architecture is often overlooked, yet it's quite unique in the monitoring ecosystem, enabling real-time metrics with second granularity. However, this architecture presents certain challenges, such as a higher resource footprint and limited performance as the number of monitored nodes increases.

Simple Observability emerges as the superior alternative to Netdata. Its architecture is built around a lightweight, open-source monitoring agent, prioritizing minimal resource use and extreme simplicity of setup. Installation requires just a single command, with all subsequent configuration managed directly through the user interface.

In this article, we'll highlight the 5 best alternatives to Netdata in 2025. We will begin with an overview of Netdata's features and shortcomings, then discuss the key criteria that should be used to evaluate and determine the top alternatives. Finally, we'll compare each tool based on these criteria to help you choose the best platform for your and your team's monitoring needs.

Netdata Overview

A key focus for Netdata is Real-Time, High-Resolution data. The platform collects all system metrics every second, and claims to maintain a low 1-second latency from the moment data is collected to when it appears on the visualization dashboard. This is presented as providing teams with immediate feedback on system changes for quick troubleshooting.

The platform includes built-in unsupervised Machine Learning (ML) for anomaly detection. This functionality is designed to automatically learn the expected patterns of your workloads and flag data points that fall outside the norm. This anomalous behavior is then highlighted on charts to assist in fast diagnosis. Additionally, a scoring engine reportedly uses this ML to help identify potential issues, including security risks, and to assist in tracing the root cause of problems across the infrastructure.

Netdata is engineered for simplicity and speed of deployment. It is primarily aimed at DevOps and operations teams. Installation is quick, and the company claims it offers a fast time-to-value. The system automatically detects and discovers data sources, supporting over 800 integrations for metrics and logs, and deploys a set of pre-configured alerts. The user interface is intended to guide teams toward investigating potential issues without needing to learn a complex query language.

The platform's distributed architecture is positioned to address the scalability and cost challenges often associated with high-resolution monitoring. By distributing the workload, Netdata's design is claimed to allow for high granularity and long-term data retention without the significant cost increases often seen with centralized tools as infrastructure size grows.

Netdata operates as a single, integrated software application installed directly on your servers. This application handles metrics, logs, synthetic checks, and alerts. This integrated approach allows multiple independent Netdata installations to be unified into one platform when viewed through the central dashboards.

Why look for a Netdata alternative?

While Netdata offers real-time, high-resolution monitoring, its specialized, distributed architecture and evolving product strategy have led many organizations and community members to seek alternatives. The common pain points often cited by users revolve around feature gaps and usability.

Limited Windows and Microsoft ecosystem support

Netdata primarily focuses on Linux environments. A frequent and significant criticism is the lack of a native Windows agent or collector and missing out-of-the-box integrations for core Microsoft products (e.g., Active Directory, Exchange, SQL Server). This makes Netdata practically unsuitable for organizations running on a predominantly Microsoft stack, as monitoring Windows environments often requires awkward workarounds.

Missing observability pillars

Beyond its strength in core system metrics, users note that Netdata's cloud offering lacks built-in support for other essential observability data types. Specifically, it generally omits native logging and Application Performance Monitoring (APM) capabilities. This forces teams to integrate separate third-party tools to cover their full monitoring needs.

User interface and usability issues

Some users find Netdata's dashboards and configuration workflows to be complex and unintuitive. Long-time users, in particular, have expressed frustration with the new unified UI, which groups metrics across nodes and is perceived as being less valuable than the old interface. General complaints also include difficulty in dashboard customization and poor mobile support.

Scalability and performance concerns at high volume

Despite its real-time focus, Netdata's performance reportedly faces limits at larger scales. Users mention that monitoring hundreds of hosts can become challenging and that aggregating data from numerous sources can be inefficient. Because the heavy data processing is often performed on the user's infrastructure rather than entirely in the cloud, very large or high-cardinality environments may find the resource tax too high.

Alerting and configuration complexity

Users have reported that Netdata's built-in alerts are basic, and custom alert configuration can be complicated. Issues also extend to management, with some users reporting frustrating experiences due to the agent automatically updating without prior notice.

How to look for a Netdata alternative?

Architecture

• Agent resource footprint: Since Netdata has a heavier agent, look for alternatives that are explicitly lightweight and use minimal CPU and memory on monitored nodes, especially in containerized or resource-constrained environments.
• Scalability and performance: Evaluate how the architecture handles thousands of nodes and high-cardinality data. Look for solutions designed for horizontal scale without introducing significant performance lag or disproportionate cost increases.

Usability and time-to-value

• Ease of setup and configuration: Prioritize tools with minimal configuration (zero-config) and a quick time-to-value. Can you install and get meaningful data within minutes?
• User experience (UX): Test the user interface for intuitiveness. Look for clear, customizable dashboards, simple navigation, and strong mobile compatibility to ensure high adoption across technical and non-technical teams.
• Documentation and support: Assess the quality of official documentation, community forums, and available commercial support to ensure your team can quickly master the platform and troubleshoot issues.

Pricing and total cost of ownership (TCO)

• Pricing model transparency: Look for clear, predictable pricing. Avoid models with complex or hidden costs (e.g., surprise overages, high data ingress/egress fees, or separate costs for short vs. long retention).
• Cost at scale: Compare the expected total cost when scaling to hundreds or thousands of nodes, especially in environments with high data volume (high-cardinality) or ephemeral containers.

Quick summary

5 best Netdata alternatives

Simple Observability

Simple Observability is a server monitoring platform designed to be a straightforward and effective solution for businesses and individuals. It distinguishes itself by providing an "all-in-one" experience, combining metrics and logs in a unified interface to give users a complete picture of their server's health without the complexity often associated with other monitoring tools.

The platform's core philosophy is simplicity, from its one-command agent installation to its web-based configuration that eliminates the need for manual file editing. It offers ready-to-use reports and alerts, allowing users to get immediate insights and define alert conditions in seconds. Its open-source agent is transparent, auditable, and designed to work on a wide range of Linux distributions.

• One-command installation: The open-source agent can be installed with a single command, significantly reducing setup time and complexity.
• Unified monitoring: Combines metrics and logs in a single, unified system, providing a holistic view of server performance.
• Web UI configuration: All configurations, from metrics to alerts, are managed through an intuitive web interface, eliminating the need for complex configuration files.
• Mobile-friendly: Offers a Progressive Web App (PWA) to monitor infrastructure and receive alerts from anywhere.

• Simplicity and ease of use: The platform is designed for quick adoption, even for users with limited monitoring knowledge.
• Transparent pricing: Simple Observability offers a clear, fixed-price model with no usage-based surprises, which can be a significant advantage over competitors.
• Open-source agent: The agent's open-source nature provides transparency and allows users to audit the code.

• Limited customization: While the simplicity is a pro, it may also be a con for advanced users who require more granular control and customizability beyond the built-in features.

Simple Observability offers a tiered pricing model with a free plan and two paid options:

• Lite (Free): A free plan for one server, including 50 metrics and low log volume.
• Standard: Priced at $9 per month for 3 servers, with an additional $3 per extra server. This plan includes 100 metrics per server and a high log volume.
• Advanced: Priced at $21 per month for 5 servers, with an additional $4 per extra server. This plan includes 200 metrics per server and a higher log volume.

Checkmk

Checkmk is a comprehensive, open-source monitoring platform for applications, servers, and networks, both on-premises and in the cloud. It is designed to effortlessly monitor everything from the simplest to the most complex IT environments.

Checkmk features over 2,000 monitoring plugins for a wide range of devices, including servers, switches, databases, and web servers. The free community edition is self-hosted with a limited feature set and supports both agent-based and agentless monitoring. Checkmk can also automatically discover and map your network.

• Automatic service discovery: Automatically detects all relevant components on a host and recommends suitable metrics and thresholds for monitoring.
• Visualization: Features modern, customizable dashboards, graphic maps.

• Comprehensive: Monitors a wide range of IT components, from cloud services to on-premises systems, with a vast library of over 2,000 plugins.
• Flexible: Supports agent-based and agentless monitoring, and is highly customizable and extensible.
• Automated: Reduces manual effort with features like auto-discovery, host lifecycle management, and a powerful REST API.

• Learning Curve & difficult configuration: While powerful, the platform can have a steep learning curve, and some users find its configuration complex, particularly for advanced features.

Checkmk offers a self-hosted model with paid licenses starting at approximately $225 per month, typically for a minimum of 100 hosts. There is also a SaaS model available, priced around $6 per host per month. The pricing is based on the number of monitored services, where a host on average has about 30 services. However, hosts like database servers or core switches can have a much higher number of services. Each group of 10 services is billed at approximately $2 per month, which can make the cost escalate quickly.

Datadog

Datadog is a SaaS-first, cloud-native observability platform that provides unified monitoring across infrastructure, applications, logs, Real User Monitoring (RUM), synthetic monitoring, and security. It’s widely used by DevOps and SRE teams managing large, distributed systems, particularly those relying heavily on cloud services.

One of Datadog's core strengths is its all-in-one approach, seamlessly correlating Metrics, Events, Logs, and Traces (MELT) within a single user interface. This unification helps teams eliminate tool silos and gain end-to-end visibility into complex, modern architectures.

• Infrastructure monitoring: Provides detailed visibility across hosts, containers, and services, backed by over 900 native integrations.
• Log management: Offers robust functionality to collect, ingest, index, and archive logs with advanced field-level filtering and analytics.

• Watchdog AI: Utilizes Machine Learning (ML) models for automated anomaly detection across metrics, logs, and traces, flagging unusual behavior without manual threshold setting.
• Unified correlation: Enables users to pivot instantly between related infrastructure metrics, application traces, and logs from a single dashboard, facilitating faster root cause analysis.

• Expensive at scale: Pricing increases significantly with host count, data volume, and feature usage.
• Complex billing model: Users frequently cite surprise costs due to multiple charges across data ingest, indexing, session counts, and feature usage.

Infrastructure monitoring starts at $15/host/month.

Zabbix

Zabbix is an open-source, enterprise-level software for monitoring various IT components, including networks, servers, virtual machines, and cloud services. Designed to handle large-scale environments.

One of Zabbix’s key strengths is its ability to collect data from virtually any source using a wide range of protocols and custom methods. The platform’s robust alerting system offers multiple channels and escalation schemes, ensuring critical issues are addressed promptly.

• Advanced Problem Detection: Utilizes intelligent thresholds, trend prediction, and machine learning to automatically detect anomalies and classify problems with multiple severity levels.
• Flexible Alerting: Supports a variety of notification channels, such as email, SMS, and instant messaging, with customizable messages and escalation scenarios.

• High Scalability: The distributed monitoring architecture, supported by Zabbix proxies, allows for unlimited scalability to monitor thousands of devices across multiple locations.
• Multi-tenancy Support: Provides flexible user profiles and permissions, making it suitable for service providers who need to offer monitoring services to multiple clients in an isolated environment.

• Steep Learning Curve: The complexity and extensive features of Zabbix can be challenging for newcomers, requiring a s ignificant time investment to master.
• Limited Guidance: Some users have reported challenges with a lack of comprehensive documentation and community support, which can hinder effective use and troubleshooting.
• Lacks support for log management.

Zabbix cloud offering starts at $50/month

Nagios

Nagios is a comprehensive, enterprise-level infrastructure monitoring solution that provides extensive monitoring of critical IT components, applications, and systems. Built on the powerful Nagios Core 4 monitoring engine, it is designed to be highly scalable and effective for organizations of all sizes, from small businesses to large enterprises.

The platform offers a centralized view of monitoring data and proactive alerts to preemptively address infrastructure issues. With a customizable GUI, configuration wizards, and multi-tenant capabilities, it is designed to simplify administration and provide a streamlined, intuitive user experience. Nagios XI’s functionality can be extended with thousands of community-developed and third-party add-ons, along with APIs for integration with other applications.

• Customizable and extensible: Offers a customizable GUI and an open architecture with community add-ons and APIs for integration.
• Configuration wizards: Simplifies the setup process for monitoring new devices and services.

• Extremely flexible: The platform's extensive plugin framework and APIs make it highly adaptable to various monitoring needs.
• Scalability: Built on Nagios Core 4, it is designed for efficient, scalable monitoring of large and distributed environments.

• Steep learning curve: The initial setup and configuration are often considered complex, making it challenging for new users.
• Outdated interface: Some users find the web UI to be cluttered and less modern compared to competitors.
• Pricing: The cost can be considered high, particularly for the enterprise edition and larger deployments.

Pricing starts at $2,495 for a 100-node license.

Conclusion

Netdata remains a solid choice for real-time infrastructure monitoring, particularly for edge environments or local deployments where data sovereignty and compliance are critical concerns. However, it is limited by a lack of certain key capabilities and a heavier resource footprint on the monitored nodes.

For teams requiring a more efficient and simplified full-stack observability platform, alternatives like Simple Observability offer a stronger value proposition with its lightweight, single-command setup and end-to-end UI-driven configuration. Enterprise-grade options such as Zabbix, Nagios, or Datadog certainly provide more advanced features, but this comes at a significantly higher cost. Ultimately, the right platform depends entirely on your specific use case, infrastructure scale, and data compliance requirements.