head to head · open source
beszel vs Apache SkyWalking
beszel has 25,459 GitHub stars, 1,019 forks, 313 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Apache SkyWalking has 24,955 stars, 6,634 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped yesterday. beszel leads on adoption by 2% (25,459 vs 24,955 stars). beszel is written in Go under MIT; Apache SkyWalking is written in Java under Apache-2.0. beszel has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, Apache SkyWalking 27%. beszel was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| beszel | Apache SkyWalking | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 25K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 6.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick beszel if
- You weight community size — 25K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Apache SkyWalking if
- You want the Apache SkyWalking feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and Apache SkyWalking fits your workflow better
About beszel
Beszel is a lightweight server monitoring platform written in Go and released under the MIT License. It consists of two components: a hub, which is a web application built on PocketBase and provides the dashboard for viewing and managing connected systems, and an agent, which runs on each system being monitored and communicates system metrics back to the hub. The project lives in the self hosted, homelab oriented monitoring ecosystem, alongside the broader category of Infrastructure and Operations tooling, and it is distributed primarily through Docker images published as henrygd/beszel for the hub and henrygd/be…
read the full beszel overview →
About Apache SkyWalking
Apache SkyWalking is an open source application performance monitoring (APM) system for distributed systems in cloud native architectures, built for teams that run microservices across Kubernetes and container based environments.
read the full Apache SkyWalking overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is beszel or Apache SkyWalking more popular?
beszel has 25,459 GitHub stars and Apache SkyWalking has 24,955. beszel has the larger community by that measure.
Are beszel and Apache SkyWalking free?
Both are open source. beszel is licensed under MIT and Apache SkyWalking under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between beszel and Apache SkyWalking?
beszel is written in Go and Apache SkyWalking in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, beszel or Apache SkyWalking?
Choose beszel if you want the larger community (25,459 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Apache SkyWalking if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.