Tools/openzipkin/zipkin

Zipkin

Distributed tracing system

17.5k ★+5/wkgrowthJavaApache License 2.0 →new this week

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Replaces:Datadog New Relic

See how it compares →

The Lens

By Erik Loyd, SaaS CEO and former COO/CFO of an AWS Premier Partner.

Updated Mar 2026

Zipkin shows you exactly where time is spent when a request crosses multiple services. It's a distributed tracing system: each service reports timing data, and Zipkin stitches it into a visual timeline showing the full request journey. When something is slow, you see which service is the bottleneck.

Fully free under Apache 2.0. It's been around since 2012 (originally from Twitter) and is battle-tested at enormous scale. Storage backends include in-memory, MySQL, Cassandra, and Elasticsearch. The UI is simple but functional: search traces by service, duration, or tags.

The catch: Zipkin is traces-only. No metrics, no logs, no dashboards. Modern observability stacks (Grafana + Tempo, SigNoz, Uptrace) bundle all three. If you're starting fresh, Jaeger (also CNCF, also free) has a more modern architecture and better Kubernetes integration. Zipkin's advantage is maturity and simplicity: it does one thing and has been doing it for over a decade.

Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid

fully free

Fully open source under Apache 2.0. No paid tier, no hosted version.

Self-hosted cost depends on storage choice:

In-memory: $0 extra, but data disappears on restart. Dev/testing only.
MySQL/Postgres: Use existing database. Minimal extra cost.
Elasticsearch: $50-100+/mo for a production cluster. The expensive option.
Cassandra: Similar to Elasticsearch in cost. Better for high-volume writes.

Compared to paid alternatives:

Datadog APM: Starts at $31/host/month
New Relic: Free tier (100GB/month), then $0.30/GB
Grafana Cloud Traces: Free up to 50GB/month

Zipkin is free but self-managed. Grafana Cloud's free tier might be the better deal for small teams.

Free. Self-hosted. Storage infrastructure is your main cost.

Self-hosting ops:significant

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Score

88/100 · A

Adoption27/30

Maintenance25/25

Community11/20

License15/15

Analysis10/10

A low score is not a verdict on quality. Young and niche tools start low by design. How we calculate scores

Trust Signals

High adoption: 17,431 starsActive community: 3,104 forksPermissive license (Apache-2.0)

About

Stars: 17,452
Forks: 3,100

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