> Source: https://glassmkr.com/vs/netdata # Glassmkr vs Netdata: focused bare-metal monitoring vs broad real-time observability. Both ship open-source agents. They differ on the alert-rule philosophy. Last verified: 2026-06-25. Glassmkr is not affiliated with Netdata. > Netdata is a real-time monitoring platform with per-second metrics, 800+ data collectors, and ML-powered anomaly detection [3](#fn3). The Agent is GPL-3.0 [1](#fn1); the Community tier is free for up to 5 connected nodes, the Business tier is $4.50/node/month billed annually [2](#fn2). Glassmkr is focused bare-metal monitoring at $3/node/month with 3 free nodes [G](#fn-glassmkr). 65 alert rules ship tuned. Crucible agent is MIT licensed. Both products do real work; they diverge on alert philosophy. Netdata ships hundreds of default alerts and gives you tools to tune them. Glassmkr ships 65 opinionated rules and asks you not to need many more. ## What’s the same Both ship open-source agents you can read before installing (GPL-3.0 vs MIT). Both have a SaaS dashboard layer with cloud-aggregated views. Both cover SMART, IPMI, RAID, ECC, ZFS on bare-metal hosts. Both have multi-channel notifications. Both have per-node SaaS pricing in the same ballpark ($3 vs $4.50/node). ## What’s different | Dimension | Netdata | Glassmkr | | --- | --- | --- | | Agent license | GPL-3.0-or-later [1](#fn1) | MIT | | Free tier | Community: up to 5 connected nodes [2](#fn2) | 3 nodes, full features | | Paid tier | Business: $4.50/node/month (annual, $54/node/year) [2](#fn2) | $3/node/month [G](#fn-glassmkr) | | Enterprise | On-Premises tier; min 200 node licenses; contact sales [2](#fn2) | Same product; contact for fleet deals | | Resolution | Per-second metrics [3](#fn3) | 60-second collection interval (configurable) | | Integrations | 800+ data collectors [3](#fn3) | Bare-metal focused; far fewer app integrations | | Default alert rules | Broad; community discussion notes many alerts during routine tasks; tunable via Alerts Configuration Manager [6](#fn6) | 65 rules across 9 categories; opinionated, tuned for bare-metal failure modes; every rule ships with deep FIX content | | Local UI on each node | Yes; embedded at `http://NODE:19999` [4](#fn4) | No; dashboard is centralised | | ML anomaly detection | Yes, default-on; "18 consensus ML models per metric" [3](#fn3) | Furnace (AI) on Pro tier; remediation-focused, not anomaly-detection-focused | | Architecture | Distributed; agents stream to Parent nodes or Netdata Cloud [3](#fn3) | Push-based; agents report to dashboard | ### Alert philosophy Netdata’s position is breadth: cover everything with reasonable defaults, give you ML to detect anomalies, and let you tune the noise via Cloud’s Alerts Configuration Manager. The Netdata community has tracker discussions about taming the default alert volume during routine operations [6](#fn6); Netdata explicitly built tooling to manage that surface. Glassmkr’s position is depth on a narrow surface: 65 rules across 9 categories, selected by an operator who’s spent a decade in bare-metal infrastructure. The defaults are tuned to "this is genuinely a problem worth waking someone up about." You don’t triage as much, because there’s less surface to triage. Every rule ships with deep FIX content (copy-pasteable remediation, verdict prior, rollback notes); 30+ are verified end-to-end on real hardware. Neither is wrong. They make different bets about what an operator wants. ### Resolution Netdata’s per-second sampling is a genuine differentiator [3](#fn3). If you’re debugging performance regressions (transient spikes, cache-warm patterns, IO-storm correlation), per-second resolution sees things 60-second interval monitoring misses. Glassmkr’s 60-second interval is fine for "did the disk fail" or "is RAID degraded" but won’t catch sub-minute performance dynamics. ## Bare-metal coverage Both cover the standard bare-metal surfaces. Netdata ships dedicated collectors for SMART (via smartctl), IPMI (via FreeIPMI plugin, which on some distros ships as a separate `netdata-plugin-freeipmi` package [5](#fn5)), MegaCLI/MegaRAID, HPE Smart Arrays, mdadm software RAID, ZFS pool state, and EDAC for ECC memory errors [5](#fn5) [7](#fn7). Glassmkr’s coverage is similar in scope (SMART, NVMe wear, IPMI sensors, BMC SEL, RAID state, ZFS, ECC). The difference is that Glassmkr exposes 65 opinionated rules with pre-tuned thresholds and per-alert remediation guidance rendered in the dashboard; Netdata exposes the raw metrics plus default thresholds and asks you to decide which signals matter. ## When Netdata is the right choice ### You need per-second resolution. For performance debugging, capacity planning under bursty workloads, or correlating sub-minute events, per-second sampling is structurally better. Glassmkr can’t match this without an architecture change. ### You need integration breadth. 800+ collectors covers app stacks, databases, message queues, and SaaS APIs that Glassmkr doesn’t. If your monitoring needs span beyond bare-metal hardware, Netdata covers more ground. ### You want a local UI on every node. The embedded dashboard at `:19999` on each agent [4](#fn4) is genuinely useful for ad-hoc inspection. Glassmkr doesn’t have this. ### You have time to triage and tune a larger default alert set. If your team has the bandwidth to engage with Netdata’s broader alert defaults and tune them via the Alerts Configuration Manager, you get more detection coverage out of it. ## When Glassmkr is the right choice ### You want opinionated bare-metal defaults that don’t need triage tuning. 65 rules across 9 categories, tuned for "genuinely worth waking someone up." If you don’t have time to engage with hundreds of default alerts, fewer well-tuned rules win. Agent footprint is under 1% of host RAM on every host we tested (around 110 MB RSS, median 108 across 10 hosts on Crucible 0.13.11), effectively 0% CPU at the default 60-second interval. ### You prefer MIT to GPL-3.0. Both are open source; the licensing difference matters for some compliance contexts. MIT is more permissive; GPL-3.0 is copyleft. ### Per-second resolution isn’t worth the cost. For typical bare-metal failure modes (disk failures, RAID degradation, ECC trends, kernel panics), 60-second sampling is sufficient. Hardware failure modes don’t develop at sub-minute timescales. The cost of per-second is bandwidth + storage + the ML model overhead. ### You want a smaller agent codebase. Crucible is targeted: collects bare-metal metrics and ships them. Netdata is a larger codebase by design (the broader collector coverage justifies it). See it on real infrastructure. The live demo is a seeded, read-only dashboard with real alerts firing. No signup, no card. [Browse the live demo](https://app.glassmkr.com/demo) [Start free](https://app.glassmkr.com/register) ## Migration: switching from Netdata to Glassmkr **Netdata Agent → Glassmkr Crucible agent.** One per host. Different license; same install pattern. **Netdata Cloud Spaces / Rooms → Glassmkr Dashboard fleet view.** Per-server detail pages. Glassmkr doesn’t have the same multi-tenant Rooms concept; if you use Netdata’s organizational grouping, evaluate whether Glassmkr’s tags cover the use case. **Netdata default alerts → Glassmkr’s 65 rules.** Expect fewer alerts firing in steady state. If you depended on Netdata’s broader default detection (process count anomalies, container restart counts, etc.) you’ll have less coverage for those areas after migration. **Netdata Cloud dashboards → Glassmkr server detail pages.** Per-server, with metrics charts and alert state. The honest trade-off: you lose per-second resolution, the embedded local UI, and most app-stack collectors. You gain a smaller opinionated rule set with per-alert remediation guidance built in. > Last verified: 2026-06-25. Sources cited inline. Glassmkr is not affiliated with Netdata. Pricing and features change frequently; verify directly with Netdata before making purchasing decisions. 1. Netdata Agent LICENSE (GPL-3.0-or-later), [github.com/netdata/netdata/blob/master/LICENSE](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/blob/master/LICENSE) (verified 2026-06-25). 2. Netdata pricing page, [netdata.cloud/pricing](https://www.netdata.cloud/pricing/) (verified 2026-06-25). 3. Netdata features page, [netdata.cloud/features](https://www.netdata.cloud/features/) (verified 2026-06-25). 4. Netdata Agent web server reference, [learn.netdata.cloud/docs/netdata-agent/configuration/securing-agents/web-server-reference](https://learn.netdata.cloud/docs/netdata-agent/configuration/securing-agents/web-server-reference) (verified 2026-06-25). 5. Netdata SMART monitoring docs, [learn.netdata.cloud/docs/collecting-metrics/hardware-devices-and-sensors/s.m.a.r.t](https://learn.netdata.cloud/docs/collecting-metrics/hardware-devices-and-sensors/s.m.a.r.t.) (verified 2026-06-25). 6. Netdata issue tracker discussion on default alert sensitivity, [github.com/netdata/netdata/issues/10687](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/issues/10687) (verified 2026-06-25). 7. Netdata IPMI integration docs, [learn.netdata.cloud/docs/collecting-metrics/hardware-devices-and-sensors/intelligent-platform-management-interface-ipmi](https://learn.netdata.cloud/docs/collecting-metrics/hardware-devices-and-sensors/intelligent-platform-management-interface-ipmi) (verified 2026-06-25). 8. Glassmkr pricing page, [glassmkr.com/pricing](https://glassmkr.com/pricing) (verified 2026-06-25). Compare Glassmkr and Netdata on your own servers. 3 nodes free, every rule, every notification channel, no card. Or explore the seeded live demo first. [Browse the live demo](https://app.glassmkr.com/demo) [Start free](https://app.glassmkr.com/register) 3 nodes free. No card required. ## Compare Glassmkr to other tools - [Glassmkr vs Datadog](/vs/datadog) - [Glassmkr vs Prometheus](/vs/prometheus) - [Glassmkr vs Checkmk](/vs/checkmk) - [Glassmkr vs Zabbix](/vs/zabbix) - [Glassmkr vs LibreNMS](/vs/librenms) - [Glassmkr vs AWS CloudWatch](/vs/cloudwatch) - [Glassmkr vs New Relic](/vs/newrelic)