Netdata shows you what a machine is doing, second by second, in extraordinary detail. Kuma tells you whether something answered. Neither substitutes for the other, and the pairing is more common than the choice.
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Which should you choose?
Netdata if you are diagnosing a machine — why it is slow, what spiked, which process is responsible. Uptime Kuma if you want to be told when something stops responding. Netdata is superb at the moment you are already investigating; Kuma is what tells you to start investigating. Most people who use one end up wanting the other.
Written by MonitoringDaddy, who also sell monitoring. We have tried to be straight about where each of these wins, including where they beat us. Prices and features are as at August 2026 and change often.
| Netdata | Uptime Kuma | MonitoringDaddy | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Watches | One host, in depth | Endpoints, from outside them | Endpoints, from outside |
| Resolution | Per second | Per check interval | Per check interval |
| Install | One-line installer per host | One container, total | Nothing to install |
| Strength | Diagnosis | Notification | Notification |
| Dashboards | Exceptional, out of the box | Simple and adequate | Simple |
| Status page | No | Yes, built in | Yes, with a custom domain |
Netdata is open source and free per node, with a paid Cloud tier for centralised views. Kuma is free with no tier above it.
| Tier | Netdata | Uptime Kuma | MonitoringDaddy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Agent is free, per node | Everything, MIT | – |
| Paid | Netdata Cloud — free tier, then per node | None | – |
| What paid adds | Central dashboards, longer retention, team features | n/a | – |
| Practical cost | Agent resource on each host | A very small VPS | – |
| Feature | Netdata | Uptime Kuma | MonitoringDaddy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Host metrics | Yes, in remarkable depth | No | No |
| Per-second resolution | Yes | No | No |
| Auto-discovery of services | Yes | No | No |
| Endpoint / HTTP checks | Limited | Yes, its whole purpose | Yes |
| External vantage point | No — it runs on the host | Only if hosted elsewhere | Yes — hosted, outside your network |
| Alerting | Yes, with sensible defaults | Yes, around ninety destinations | Built in, seven channels |
| Status page | No | Yes | Yes, with a custom domain |
| Agent required | Yes, on each host | No | No agent needed |
| Best moment to open it | While something is going wrong | When it tells you something went wrong | When it tells you something broke |
| Setup effort | Minutes per host | Minutes, once | A minute |
| Cron / scheduled job monitoring | No | Push monitors, yes | Yes, same allowance |
| Page content change watching | No | No | Yes, same allowance |
| All check types on one allowance | No — separate products | No — separate tools | Yes |
A tick in a table hides most of the difference. This is what each row is really saying.
Netdata collects per second. Kuma collects per check interval, typically a minute. A spike lasting fifteen seconds is plainly visible in one and does not exist in the other — which is the whole reason Netdata is worth its agent.
Incidents have two halves: finding out, and finding the cause. Kuma is the first, Netdata is the second. Teams usually feel the pain of whichever half they are missing, and that is the honest way to choose between them.
Netdata's agent runs on the host and is where all its depth comes from. It is also why it cannot tell you that host has become unreachable — a monitor running on the thing it monitors is silent at exactly the wrong moment.
Netdata's are exceptional out of the box, with no assembly and no query language. Kuma's are simple and sufficient for what it stores. If you have ever spent a weekend building Grafana panels, the difference is worth noticing.
The agent is free per node. Cloud adds centralised dashboards across hosts, longer retention and team features, free to a point then priced per node. Worth checking against your node count before assuming it stays free.
Neither watches an endpoint from outside your infrastructure, and neither monitors cron jobs or page content. A single external check covers the first and is often the cheapest thing in the stack.
Incidents have two halves: finding out, and finding the cause. Kuma is the first, Netdata is the second. Whichever half currently hurts is the tool to add.
It is one command per machine and useful immediately. If you deploy to a managed platform with no hosts to touch, most of its value has nowhere to land.
One instance, one entry per endpoint, alerting straight away. Nothing Netdata does replaces that.
Netdata runs on the host, Kuma usually runs on your infrastructure. Neither can report your infrastructure being unreachable. One external check covers both.
You operate machines and need to see what they are doing in detail — especially while something is going wrong.
You need to be told when something stops responding, and to show customers a status page.
We do neither host metrics nor per-second resolution — for diagnosis, Netdata is far better than anything we offer. We sit closest to Kuma, with the difference that our checks run from outside your infrastructure. Netdata plus one external check is a strong, cheap combination: one tells you something broke, the other tells you why.
Uptime, SSL expiry, domain expiry, API checks, cron heartbeats and page-change watching all draw on one allowance here, rather than being separate products or separate bills.
Start freeThe free plan sends to one email address. Every paid plan adds the chat and webhook channels below, with 2 to 10 destinations depending on the plan. However many alerts you receive, the price does not change — nothing here is metered or charged per alert.
There are no voice calls and no SMS. If a phone call at 3am is a hard requirement, say so before you subscribe — we would rather tell you now than refund you later.
Not really. Netdata has some endpoint checking, but it runs on your host and is built to observe that host. If the machine or its network goes away, so does Netdata's ability to tell you.
No. Kuma has no host metrics of any kind. When an alert fires and you need to know why, Kuma has nothing further to offer.
The agent is open source and free on every node. Netdata Cloud has a free tier and then charges per node for centralised dashboards, longer retention and team features.
It is designed to be light and generally is, but per-second collection is not free. On a small instance it is worth watching what it costs you.
The one covering the half you are missing. If nobody currently finds out when the site goes down, that is Kuma. If you already get told but then guess at causes, that is Netdata.
Yes, and it is the usual end state. Kuma raises the alert, Netdata answers the next question. They overlap barely at all.
Last updated August 2026 · Written by Amit Gupta, founder of MonitoringDaddy