Grafana Mimir vs Netdata
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Grafana Mimir
Scalable long-term storage for Prometheus metrics
VS
Netdata
Real-time per-second infrastructure monitoring
| Feature | Grafana Mimir | Netdata |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 90 · Excellent | 100 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Language | Go | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 1,024 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, helm | docker, bare-metal, kubernetes |
| GitHub stars | ★ 5,238 | ★ 80,637 |
| First released | 2022 | 2013 |
| Replaces | Datadog, Chronosphere | Datadog, New Relic |
What are Grafana Mimir and Netdata?
Grafana Mimir
Grafana Mimir is an open-source, horizontally scalable, highly available, multi-tenant time series database for Prometheus and OpenTelemetry metrics. It is designed to store and query hundreds of millions of active series.
- Massive cardinality support
- Multi-tenant by design
- Fast query engine
- Object storage backend
Netdata
Netdata is a real-time monitoring agent that collects thousands of metrics per second and visualizes them with zero configuration. It targets administrators who want instant, granular system insight. It is deployed via Docker or native packages.
- Per-second real-time metrics
- Zero-configuration auto-discovery
- Built-in anomaly detection
- Thousands of collectors
Grafana Mimir vs Netdata: key differences
Both projects are written in Go. Licensing differs — AGPL-3.0 for Grafana Mimir versus GPL-3.0 for Netdata. Netdata is the lighter option, starting around 256 MB of RAM against 1,024 MB for Grafana Mimir. Netdata is the more established project (first released 2013), while Grafana Mimir arrived in 2022. Netdata has the considerably larger community, at 80,637 GitHub stars versus 5,238.
Why pick each one
Choose Grafana Mimir if…
- Proven at billion-series scale
- Easier to operate than Cortex
Watch out for
- Resource intensive
- Complex for small homelabs
Choose Netdata if…
- Instant insight out of the box
- Beautiful real-time charts
- Easy install
Watch out for
- Long retention needs tuning
- Cloud features are commercial
Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Mimir or Netdata better?
Netdata is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler easy setup. Consider Grafana Mimir if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Grafana Mimir and Netdata free and open-source?
Yes. Grafana Mimir is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Netdata under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Grafana Mimir and Netdata with Docker?
Grafana Mimir: yes. Netdata: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Grafana Mimir or Netdata?
Netdata has the smaller minimum footprint at 256 MB of RAM, compared to about 1,024 MB for Grafana Mimir. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.