RunOnVPS

Comparison · self-hosted monitoring and observability

Grafana vs Netdata

Grafana: Open observability and data visualization platform for metrics logs and traces.
Netdata: Real-time per-second infrastructure monitoring and observability platform.

Compare requirementsSize them together

Requirements

Side-by-side VPS specs

Every value is taken from each app’s RunOnVPS dataset entry. Badges show whether a figure is an official project figure or a RunOnVPS estimate — never compare the two as if they were equal.

Grafana vs Netdata hardware requirements and facts
ResourceGrafanaNetdata
Minimum RAM512MB Official512MB Estimated
Minimum CPU1 Official1 Estimated
Minimum disk5GB Estimated4GB Official
Recommended RAM2GB Estimated1GB Estimated
Recommended CPU2 Estimated1 Estimated
Recommended diskNot stated Not statedNot stated Not stated
Suggested VPS tier (our sizing)2 GB RAM tier1 GB RAM tier
GPUNot requiredNot required
Docker supportYesYes
LicenceAGPL-3.0GPL-3.0
GitHub stars7746381108
Commercial alternativeGrafana CloudDatadog
CategoryMonitoring / Analytics / InfraMonitoring / Analytics / Infra

Disk figures describe the application footprint recorded in the dataset. Personal media, documents, backups and other user data can require substantially more storage. Full source notes: Grafana requirements · Netdata requirements.

Who should pick it

Grafana

Pick Grafana if you need the visualisation layer — dashboards across many data sources — and accept that it stores no metrics itself: a data source such as Prometheus is sized separately. Its official minimum is 512 MB RAM / 1 core.

See the full Grafana requirements →

Who should pick it

Netdata

Pick Netdata if you want the monitoring agent itself, collecting per-second metrics with a footprint its docs measure at 100–200 MB RAM on an empty system (250–350 MB in typical production) and about 4 GiB of disk by default.

See the full Netdata requirements →

Verdict

The short version

  • They do different jobs inside the same group: Grafana is the dashboard and visualisation platform, Netdata is the real-time agent — so the pick is about which layer you are missing, not which is “better”.
  • Published minimums are close: both record a 512 MB minimum RAM row — official for Grafana, an estimate for Netdata derived from its official production footprint. Recommended rows put Grafana at an estimated 2 GB (2 GB RAM tier) and Netdata at an estimated 1 GB (1 GB RAM tier).
  • Netdata is the only one of the pair with an official disk figure (about 4 GiB by default); Grafana publishes no disk figure, so its 5 GB minimum is an estimate.
  • Licences: Grafana is AGPL-3.0; Netdata’s agent is GPL-3.0, with its dashboard UI under a separate licence. Netdata has slightly more GitHub stars in our dataset (~81k vs ~77k, checked 2026-10-24).

Neither verdict nor table scores the apps against each other — the right pick depends on the job, the licence you can accept, and how much of the spec is published rather than estimated. If you plan to run either alongside other apps, add it to a multi-app VPS estimate →