head to head · open source
Apache SkyWalking vs beyla
Apache SkyWalking has 24,958 GitHub stars, 6,633 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. beyla has 2,132 stars, 193 forks, 109 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Apache SkyWalking leads on adoption by 1,071% (24,958 vs 2,132 stars). Apache SkyWalking is written in Java under Apache-2.0; beyla is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Apache SkyWalking has attracted 27% as many forks as stars, beyla 9%. beyla was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ebpf, observability), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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
| Apache SkyWalking | beyla | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 193 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Apache SkyWalking if
- You weight community size — 25K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick beyla if
- You want the beyla feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and beyla fits your workflow better
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 →
About beyla
Beyla is a vendor agnostic, eBPF based auto instrumentation tool from Grafana that generates OpenTelemetry trace spans and Prometheus metrics for HTTP/S and gRPC services without any modification to application code or configuration, and it is aimed at platform, SRE and observability engineers who need application level telemetry from services they cannot or will not instrument by hand.
read the full beyla overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Apache SkyWalking or beyla more popular?
Apache SkyWalking has 24,958 GitHub stars and beyla has 2,132. Apache SkyWalking has the larger community by that measure.
Are Apache SkyWalking and beyla free?
Both are open source. Apache SkyWalking is licensed under Apache-2.0 and beyla under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Apache SkyWalking and beyla?
Apache SkyWalking is written in Java and beyla in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Apache SkyWalking or beyla?
Choose Apache SkyWalking if you want the larger community (24,958 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose beyla if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.