Netdata vs Beszel: Which Should You Self-Host?

Quick Verdict

Netdata is the better choice if you want deep, real-time visibility into everything running on your servers. Beszel is the better choice if you want a clean, lightweight dashboard that shows you the basics without eating your resources. For most homelab users monitoring 1-5 servers, Beszel gives you 80% of what you need at 10% of the resource cost. For production environments or anyone who needs per-process metrics, anomaly detection, or 800+ integrations, Netdata is worth the overhead.

Overview

Netdata and Beszel represent two philosophies of self-hosted monitoring. Netdata is a comprehensive monitoring platform that auto-discovers services, collects thousands of metrics per second at one-second resolution, and ships with pre-built dashboards for everything from Docker containers to PostgreSQL query performance. It includes ML-powered anomaly detection and supports parent-child streaming for multi-server setups.

Beszel is a lightweight monitoring hub built on PocketBase. It uses a hub-agent architecture where a central dashboard collects system metrics (CPU, RAM, disk, network, temperatures, GPU) from agents on each server. It does fewer things but does them with a clean UI, minimal resource usage, and near-zero configuration.

Feature Comparison

Feature	Netdata	Beszel
Architecture	Agent per server (optional parent-child streaming)	Hub-agent (central dashboard + per-server agents)
Metrics collected	Thousands (CPU, RAM, disk, network, per-process, per-container, application-specific)	Core system metrics (CPU, RAM, disk, network, temperatures, GPU, containers)
Data resolution	1-second default	~10-second intervals
Pre-built dashboards	800+ auto-discovered charts	Single unified dashboard
Application monitoring	Yes — auto-detects databases, web servers, message queues, etc.	No — system-level metrics only
Container monitoring	Per-container CPU, RAM, network, disk I/O	Per-container resource usage
Anomaly detection	ML-powered, built-in	No
Alerting	Built-in with email, Slack, Discord, PagerDuty, and more	Configurable alerts for CPU, RAM, disk, bandwidth, temperature, load average
Multi-user support	Via Netdata Cloud (free tier available)	Built-in multi-user with OAuth/OIDC
S.M.A.R.T. disk health	Via collector plugin	Built-in
GPU monitoring	NVIDIA via plugin	NVIDIA and AMD
API	REST API for metrics	REST API (PocketBase-based)
License	GPL-3.0	MIT
RAM usage (idle)	100-300 MB	30-50 MB (hub + agent combined)
Docker image size	~500 MB	~30 MB (hub), ~15 MB (agent)

Docker Compose Configurations

Netdata

Create a docker-compose.yml:

services:
  netdata:
    image: netdata/netdata:v2.9.0
    container_name: netdata
    hostname: my-server # Change to your server's hostname
    pid: host
    network_mode: host
    cap_add:
      - SYS_PTRACE
      - SYS_ADMIN
    security_opt:
      - apparmor:unconfined
    volumes:
      - netdataconfig:/etc/netdata   # Configuration files
      - netdatalib:/var/lib/netdata   # Database and plugins
      - netdatacache:/var/cache/netdata # Metric cache
      - /:/host/root:ro,rslave       # Host filesystem (read-only)
      - /etc/passwd:/host/etc/passwd:ro # User info for per-user metrics
      - /etc/group:/host/etc/group:ro   # Group info
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro # Timezone
      - /proc:/host/proc:ro           # Process info
      - /sys:/host/sys:ro             # System info
      - /etc/os-release:/host/etc/os-release:ro # OS identification
      - /var/log:/host/var/log:ro     # System logs
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro # Docker container monitoring
      - /run/dbus:/run/dbus:ro        # SystemD service monitoring
    restart: unless-stopped

volumes:
  netdataconfig:
  netdatalib:
  netdatacache:

Start it and access the dashboard at http://your-server:19999:

docker compose up -d

Netdata uses network_mode: host and elevated capabilities (SYS_PTRACE, SYS_ADMIN) because it needs direct access to host processes, network interfaces, and system internals. This is the trade-off for comprehensive monitoring — the container has broad read access to your host.

Beszel

Beszel uses a hub-agent model. Deploy the hub on your monitoring server and an agent on each server you want to monitor.

Hub — docker-compose.yml on your central server:

services:
  beszel:
    image: henrygd/beszel:0.18.4
    container_name: beszel-hub
    volumes:
      - ./beszel_data:/beszel_data       # Hub database and config
    ports:
      - "8090:8090"                      # Web UI
    restart: unless-stopped

Start the hub, create an admin account at http://your-server:8090, then add a system in the UI. Beszel generates an agent connection key that you copy into the agent config.

Agent — docker-compose.yml on each monitored server:

services:
  beszel-agent:
    image: henrygd/beszel-agent:0.18.4
    container_name: beszel-agent
    network_mode: host
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro # Docker container monitoring
    environment:
      PORT: "45876"                      # Agent listen port
      KEY: "YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY_HERE"        # Paste the key from the hub UI
    restart: unless-stopped

docker compose up -d

The agent is remarkably small. It runs as a single binary with no dependencies, using network_mode: host to read network interface stats directly.

Installation Complexity

Netdata is a single container that works immediately. Run docker compose up -d, open port 19999, and you have hundreds of charts populating in real time. No configuration needed for basic monitoring. The complexity comes later — configuring alerting, setting up parent-child streaming for multiple servers, or tuning retention policies. The volume of data it presents can be overwhelming if you just want to know whether your server is healthy.

Beszel requires two components — a hub and at least one agent — but each is trivially simple. The hub is one container with one volume mount. The agent is one container with two environment variables. Adding a new server means deploying an agent container and clicking “Add System” in the hub UI. The initial setup takes slightly more steps than Netdata, but managing multiple servers is arguably easier because everything is centralized in a single dashboard from the start.

Winner: Netdata for single-server monitoring (one container, done). Beszel for multi-server setups (centralized hub is cleaner than configuring Netdata parent-child streaming).

Performance and Resource Usage

This is where the gap is most visible.

Netdata collects thousands of metrics at one-second intervals. That granularity costs resources. Expect 100-300 MB of RAM on a typical server, with spikes higher when the dashboard is actively being viewed. CPU usage sits around 1-3% idle. The Docker image is roughly 500 MB. On a small VPS with 2-4 GB of RAM, Netdata consumes a meaningful percentage of available memory.

Beszel was built to be light. The hub uses around 20-30 MB of RAM. Each agent uses about 10-20 MB. On a small VPS, you barely notice it is running. The Docker images are tiny — under 30 MB for the hub, under 15 MB for the agent. CPU usage is negligible.

Winner: Beszel, decisively. If you are running a Raspberry Pi or a small VPS where every megabyte counts, Beszel is the obvious choice.

Monitoring Depth

Netdata auto-discovers and monitors applications running on your server — databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB), web servers (Nginx, Apache), message queues (RabbitMQ, Redis), Docker containers, and hundreds more. Each gets its own set of charts. You get per-process CPU and RAM breakdown, per-disk I/O latency, per-network-interface throughput, and ML-based anomaly scores on every metric. If something goes wrong, Netdata probably already has a chart showing the cause.

Beszel monitors system-level metrics: CPU usage, RAM usage, disk usage and I/O, network bandwidth, temperatures, GPU utilization, and per-container resource usage. It does not look inside applications. If your PostgreSQL queries are slow, Beszel shows you the server CPU spike but not the query causing it.

Winner: Netdata, by a wide margin. This is its core strength — no other single-container tool gives you this depth out of the box.

Alerting

Netdata ships with hundreds of pre-configured alerts covering system resources, application health, and anomaly detection. It supports email, Slack, Discord, PagerDuty, Telegram, and many more notification channels. The alert system includes escalation logic and hysteresis to reduce false positives. The configuration is powerful but can feel complex.

Beszel offers configurable alerts for CPU, RAM, disk, bandwidth, temperature, load average, and system status. The configuration is straightforward through the web UI — set a threshold, pick a notification method, done. It covers the essentials, but there is no anomaly detection and no application-level alerting.

Winner: Netdata for comprehensive alerting. Beszel for “just tell me if a server is running hot.”

Community and Support

Netdata has a large community — over 73,000 GitHub stars, active forums, and regular releases. Documentation is extensive. The company behind it (Netdata Inc.) offers a free cloud tier and commercial plans. Development is fast and well-funded.

Beszel is a newer, community-driven project with a growing following — over 8,000 GitHub stars. Development is active, with regular releases adding features like GPU monitoring and S.M.A.R.T. support. Documentation is clear but less comprehensive than Netdata’s. Being MIT-licensed with no commercial entity means it is fully community-sustained.

Winner: Netdata for maturity and ecosystem. Beszel for simplicity of contribution and MIT licensing.

Use Cases

Choose Netdata If…

• You need per-process, per-container, and per-application monitoring from a single tool
• You run databases, web servers, or other services that need application-level metrics
• You want ML-powered anomaly detection to catch problems you did not anticipate
• You have servers with 4+ GB of RAM where the resource overhead is acceptable
• You need one-second metric resolution for debugging performance issues
• You are comfortable with a dense, information-rich dashboard

Choose Beszel If…

• You monitor a homelab or a few VPS instances and want a clean overview
• Your servers have limited RAM (1-2 GB) and you cannot spare 200+ MB for monitoring
• You want a simple, beautiful dashboard that answers “is everything okay?” at a glance
• You prefer a centralized hub-agent architecture with easy multi-server management
• You value S.M.A.R.T. disk health and GPU monitoring in a lightweight package
• You do not need application-level metrics — system-level health is sufficient

Final Verdict

For homelab users and small-scale self-hosters who want a lightweight, beautiful dashboard that shows whether their servers are healthy, Beszel is the better choice. It does the fundamentals well, uses almost no resources, and the hub-agent architecture makes multi-server monitoring clean and centralized.

For anyone running production workloads, debugging performance problems, or needing visibility into application behavior, Netdata is the clear winner. Nothing else gives you this depth of monitoring from a single container. The resource cost is real, but the insight it provides is worth it on servers that can afford the overhead.

If you are unsure, start with Beszel. It takes five minutes to deploy, and if you find yourself wishing you could see database query latency or per-process resource breakdown, that is your signal to switch to Netdata — or run both, since Beszel’s overhead is negligible.

Related

• How to Self-Host Netdata
• How to Self-Host Beszel
• Grafana vs Netdata
• Grafana vs Beszel
• Uptime Kuma vs Beszel
• Best Self-Hosted Monitoring Tools
• Docker Compose Basics