Netdata Dashboard Features: What Is Free, Open Source and Paid

Netdata gives you a complete monitoring engine for free. The Netdata Agent, which collects, stores and queries every metric, runs machine learning and alerts, is open source. Its dashboard is free to use with every Agent. A free Netdata Cloud account adds the views that can expose sensitive data and one sign-in across all your nodes. Paid plans add the products that turn your data into answers for a team: topology, flows, logs management, tracing, digital experience, Netdata AI, and Netdata Cloud on your own infrastructure.

The short answer

• Open source: the Netdata Agent, under GPLv3+. Install it on any number of nodes; it collects and stores data from all of them.
• Free to use: the dashboard, on every Agent and Parent, and the Netdata Cloud Community plan.
• Paid: Business (per node), and Enterprise with Netdata Cloud On-Prem. Prices are on the pricing page.

What is open source in Netdata

The Netdata Agent is the engine of Netdata, and it is open source under GPLv3+: data collection through 800+ integrations, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, StatsD and Nagios plugins; per-second storage on your own disks; the query engine; unsupervised machine learning on every metric; alerting; streaming between Agents and Parents; the API; and the MCP server. Everything you monitor is collected, stored and analyzed by open-source software that runs on your infrastructure (open-source Netdata).

Is the Netdata dashboard open source?

No, but it is free to use with every Netdata Agent and Parent. The dashboard UI ships under the Netdata Cloud UI License (NCUL1) as its own package, netdata-dashboard, which keeps a local copy of the UI on the node so the dashboard works without internet access. It is the same UI Netdata Cloud runs, so every improvement reaches every Agent and Parent. Netdata’s official packages install it; distributions that ship only open-source software can build the Agent without it.

Why does Netdata ask you to sign in?

Netdata is a distributed system: every server runs its own Agent. The only way to have one sign-in across every installation is single sign-on. The free Netdata Cloud Community plan is the simplest way to get it: sign in once, and every Agent recognizes you. Business adds Enterprise SSO with your own identity provider (Okta, OpenID Connect).

Sign-in protects your privacy. Logs, processes, network connections and database queries show what your systems are doing in detail, so the dashboard shows them only to signed-in members of your Netdata Cloud Space. Metrics, anomalies and alerts need no sign-in.

What each plan gives you

1. Metrics are always available, on every dashboard. Every Agent’s own dashboard shows its node in full. On dashboards that cover more nodes (Netdata Cloud, Parents), free plans unlock 5 nodes of your choice; a paid plan unlocks all. Every node keeps collecting, storing and alerting either way.
2. Sensitive data needs a free Netdata Cloud account, to protect your privacy. Logs Monitoring (systemd journal, Windows Event Log, macOS logs) and the sensitive live views (processes, network connections, systemd units, database queries, streaming topology) open on the Community plan.
3. Topologies, tracing, Logs Management, network flows, real user monitoring and synthetic browser tests are paid. So are the SNMP traps explorer and central configuration management. Their data is collected and stored on every plan, and their metrics and alerts work on every plan, so the history is there the day you upgrade.
4. Netdata Cloud connects your fleet. Community gives you access from anywhere without a VPN or an open port, a central view of alerts, notifications by email, Discord and the mobile app, Rooms and basic roles. Business adds every notification integration (Slack, Microsoft Teams, PagerDuty), all roles, Enterprise SSO, SCIM and audit events.
5. AI on your own terms, and across your fleet. Every Agent and Parent runs an MCP server, so your own AI assistant can query your infrastructure directly. Business adds the Netdata Cloud MCP server for all your nodes and AI conversations with Netdata AI; AI Investigations are an add-on, and Enterprise adds AI Co-SRE.

Side by side:

Enterprise includes everything in Business, runs Netdata Cloud on your own infrastructure if you need it, including air-gapped sites, and adds AI Co-SRE; 24/7 support with a dedicated team is available.

What you get for each kind of monitoring

Infrastructure monitoring

The open-source Agent collects every metric from your servers, virtual machines, containers, Kubernetes and hardware per second, stores it on your own disks and charts it automatically, with anomaly detection and alerts, without signing in. The Community plan adds the live views of each node, such as processes and systemd units, and your dashboards from anywhere. Business unlocks every node and lets you configure collectors and service discovery from the UI.

Endpoint and edge monitoring

Windows, macOS, FreeBSD and edge devices from Raspberry Pi to NVIDIA Jetson run the same open-source Agent, with per-second metrics, hardware health and anomaly detection on each one, even when they stream to a Parent over unreliable links. The Community plan adds Windows Event Logs, macOS logs and live network connections. Business adds the application dependency map across your endpoints and fleet configuration from the UI.

Cloud monitoring (AWS and Azure)

Point the open-source Agent at your AWS accounts and Azure subscriptions, and your managed services are charted, alerted on and checked for anomalies next to the servers and containers they run on, without signing in. The Community plan puts them in Netdata Cloud, reachable from anywhere. Business unlocks every node and lets you set up the cloud collectors from the UI.

Database monitoring

The open-source Agent finds your databases and charts every database, table, index and replica per second, with stock alerts and anomaly detection. The Community plan adds the queries loading a database right now, running queries, deadlocks and query errors, fetched live from the database; query text never leaves your infrastructure. Business unlocks every node and database configuration from the UI.

Network performance monitoring

The open-source Agent monitors any SNMP device with zero configuration, including BGP sessions and network licenses, and receives and stores SNMP traps and NetFlow, sFlow and IPFIX on every plan. The Community plan adds the live network connections of every node. Business adds the views that turn that data into answers: the SNMP traps explorer, the topology maps (Layer 2 and Layer 3, application dependencies, vSphere, Cato Networks) and the Network Flows dashboard.

Logs

The Community plan turns every node into a log explorer for its own systemd journal, Windows Event Log or macOS logs, with nothing shipped and nothing stored twice. The Agent also ingests and stores OpenTelemetry logs from any source on every plan. Business opens them in Logs Management: one explorer with facets, full-text search and live tail across all your logs.

Application performance monitoring

The open-source Agent monitors processes, operating system services and containers, and your custom application metrics through Prometheus, OpenTelemetry or StatsD, with anomaly detection and alerts. The Community plan adds Logs Monitoring, querying operating system logs on Linux, Windows and macOS. Business adds distributed tracing: trace waterfalls and rate, error and duration analysis over any slice of your traffic, from traces stored on your own infrastructure.

Digital experience monitoring

API, uptime, port, DNS and certificate checks run from your own Agents on every plan. Real user monitoring and synthetic browser tests also run on your Agents, and their Core Web Vitals and test results arrive as charts with alerts on every plan. Business adds the Digital Experience views: sessions, pages, errors and live visitors for real user monitoring, and runs, journeys and Lighthouse reports for browser tests.

AI infrastructure and Netdata AI

The open-source Agent monitors GPUs and AI serving stacks such as vLLM and LiteLLM like any other workload, and runs machine learning on every metric from the moment it is collected. Every Agent and Parent runs an MCP server, so your own AI assistant can query your infrastructure directly. Business adds AI conversations with Netdata AI and the Netdata Cloud MCP server across your fleet; AI Investigations are an add-on for automated root cause analysis, and Enterprise adds AI Co-SRE, an autonomous SRE agent that works 24/7.

When teams choose a paid plan or Netdata Cloud On-Prem

• One view of the whole fleet. More than 5 nodes on one dashboard, without choosing which ones to unlock.
• A team, not a person. All roles, Enterprise SSO with your identity provider, SCIM provisioning and audit events.
• Alerts where the team works. Slack, Microsoft Teams and PagerDuty from one central place.
• Answers, not only data. Topology maps, network flows, the SNMP traps explorer, Logs Management, distributed tracing and digital experience views.
• Configuration from the UI. Collectors and alerts set up centrally, without editing files on each node.
• AI for the fleet. Netdata AI conversations, the Netdata Cloud MCP server and AI Investigations.
• Your own Netdata Cloud. Enterprise runs Netdata Cloud on your infrastructure, including air-gapped and compliance-bound sites, with AI Co-SRE, and 24/7 support with a dedicated team is available.

Plans and prices are on the pricing page.

Where to go next

• How the dashboard works, chart by chart: dashboards and charts.
• Port 19999, access lists and bearer tokens: securing Netdata Agents.
• Offline and air-gapped systems: installing on offline systems.
• Install the Agent: installation guide.
• Plans and prices: pricing.