Cut Infrastructure Monitoring Costs by 90% With True Real-Time Visibility

Not entirely. Netdata excels at infrastructure and application monitoring, but CloudWatch provides AWS-specific service metrics (S3, Lambda, API Gateway, etc.) that Netdata cannot replace natively. We recommend running Netdata for infrastructure/application monitoring while maintaining CloudWatch only for AWS-native service metrics. This approach delivers 90% cost savings while maintaining complete visibility. Netdata can collect CloudWatch metrics via exporters if needed.

Real customer results demonstrate 90% cost reduction compared to CloudWatch and similar cloud-native monitoring solutions. Examples include Motohunt achieving 90% reduction vs Stackdriver, Managed Server eliminating 100% of CloudWatch costs, and 7 Oaks Group reducing infrastructure spending by 50%. Netdata’s per-node pricing includes unlimited metrics, logs, users, dashboards, ML, and AI with no hidden fees for API calls, custom metrics, or data volume.

Everything: unlimited metrics (no per-metric charges), unlimited logs (no per-GB charges), unlimited users (no per-seat charges), unlimited dashboards (no per-dashboard charges), unlimited queries (no API charges), ML/AI included (anomaly detection, AI Chat, AI Insights), and all features (no premium tiers, no hidden fees). The price is simple: nodes × predictable per node pricing = total cost.

Netdata’s distributed architecture processes data at the edge (each node independently), not in a central location. This enables 4.5+ billion metrics/second globally with no central bottleneck. Each Agent handles 3,000-20,000 metrics/second using <5% CPU and 150-200 MB RAM (scientifically validated as most energy-efficient). Linear scalability means adding nodes doesn’t affect existing performance - proven at 100,000+ node deployments.

No. Netdata uses <5% CPU and 150-200 MB RAM per agent, scientifically validated by the University of Amsterdam (https://research.vu.nl/en/publications/an-empirical-evaluation-oftheenergy-andperformance-overhead-ofmon/) as the most energy-efficient monitoring solution. CloudWatch Agent can use 15-80% CPU with wildcards and suffers from goroutine memory leaks. Netdata is more efficient despite collecting more data because of its optimized architecture and intelligent resource management.

Netdata trains 18 unsupervised k-means models per metric using 6-hour training windows with 3-hour staggered intervals. Anomalies are flagged only when ALL 18 models agree (consensus-based), achieving 99% false positive reduction with a theoretical rate of 10^-36. Training happens automatically in the background as low-priority tasks, requiring no setup. Models retrain every 3 hours to adapt to changing patterns. Full ML confidence is achieved in approximately 2 days.

Yes, for most use cases. On Linux, Netdata queries systemd-journal directly (no pipeline). On Windows, it queries Windows Event Log directly. This eliminates Elasticsearch/Splunk infrastructure, achieving 90% cost reduction while providing 200× more accurate statistics (analyzes 1M vs 5K entries before sampling). No ingestion fees, no storage multiplication, no query charges - all included in per-node pricing.

Recommended approach: (1) Install Netdata on EC2 instances in 60 seconds, (2) Run both CloudWatch and Netdata in parallel to validate, (3) Shift alerting to Netdata for better accuracy and ML-based detection, (4) Shift dashboards to Netdata (automated, better), (5) Reduce CloudWatch to AWS-specific services only (S3, Lambda, etc.), (6) Realize 90% cost savings while improving visibility. Most customers complete this transition within 30 days.

Only if services require authentication (databases, message brokers, APIs with passwords). Otherwise, Netdata auto-discovers and monitors 800+ integrations automatically. No manual configuration for open endpoints. The system generates dashboards, trains ML models, and configures 400+ pre-configured alerts automatically within 60 seconds of installation.

Netdata has comprehensive Kubernetes support with DaemonSet deployment (agent per node), auto-discovery (pods, services, objects), container metrics (cgroups v1/v2), Kubernetes state monitoring, Helm chart available, and EKS/ECS/Fargate support. Installation takes minutes, and monitoring begins immediately with zero configuration required.

Netdata monitors everything uniformly. The same agent works on AWS, Azure, GCP, and on-premises. Unified dashboards work regardless of infrastructure location. No data egress charges because data stays local. 800+ integrations across all platforms provide comprehensive coverage. This is a key advantage over CloudWatch’s AWS-only ecosystem.

No direct import, but it’s not needed. Netdata generates better dashboards automatically in 60 seconds. Each Netdata chart provides analytical capability equivalent to 25+ Grafana charts. Most customers prefer Netdata’s automated dashboards over manually rebuilding CloudWatch dashboards because they’re more comprehensive, update automatically, and require zero maintenance.

Netdata satisfies strict compliance requirements: SOC 2 Type 2 certified, data sovereignty (all data stays on-premises), GDPR compliant by design, HIPAA ready (BAA available), PCI DSS aligned, On-Premises Cloud option (air-gapped), and WORM + FSS for logs (tamper detection). This makes Netdata ideal for regulated industries requiring data locality and audit trails.

Community Plan: Forum/Discord community support. Business Plan: Email/ticket support with SLA. Enterprise Plan: 24/7 support, dedicated team, phone support. On-Premises: Custom support agreements. All plans include comprehensive documentation at learn.netdata.cloud and active community engagement.

Netdata Cloud (SaaS) provides centralized dashboards, RBAC, SSO, and team collaboration with 99.9% SLA. Netdata Cloud On-Premises runs the entire control plane in your datacenter for air-gapped environments. Both options keep all observability data (metrics, logs) on your infrastructure - only metadata travels to Cloud. Choose based on your connectivity and compliance requirements.

Yes. Netdata provides implementation assistance, architecture design, migration support, custom integrations, training programs, and consulting services. Contact sales@netdata.cloud for details on professional services packages tailored to your needs.

Netdata Cloud provides RBAC (role-based access control), Spaces (physical isolation per organization/customer), Rooms (logical isolation per team/service/incident), SSO (OIDC, Okta, LDAP/AD integration), SCIM (automatic role mapping from AD/LDAP groups), and comprehensive audit logs for activity tracking.

Netdata does not currently support distributed tracing, but OpenTelemetry traces support is planned for Q2 2026. For microservices architectures requiring distributed tracing now, we recommend combining Netdata (infrastructure/application monitoring) with Jaeger, Zipkin, Grafana Tempo, or AWS X-Ray. Netdata excels at infrastructure monitoring and complements trace-centric APM platforms.

Yes. The Netdata Agent is fully open source (GPLv3+) with 76,000+ GitHub stars and 1.5M daily downloads. Netdata Cloud provides additional features (centralized dashboards, RBAC, SSO) with free and paid tiers. You can run standalone Agents open source forever or upgrade to Cloud for team collaboration and enterprise features.

60 seconds. Run a single-line command, and Netdata automatically discovers your infrastructure, generates dashboards, trains ML models, and starts monitoring. No configuration, no query languages, no manual dashboard building required. From installation to actionable insights in one minute.