head to head · open source
huginn vs Apache SkyWalking
huginn has 50,269 GitHub stars, 4,339 forks, 698 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Apache SkyWalking has 24,984 stars, 6,630 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped yesterday. huginn leads on adoption by 101% (50,269 vs 24,984 stars). huginn is written in Ruby under MIT; Apache SkyWalking is written in Java under Apache-2.0. huginn has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Apache SkyWalking 27%. Apache SkyWalking 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| huginn | Apache SkyWalking | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 25K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 6.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick huginn if
- You weight community size — 50K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- 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 huginn
What is Huginn? Huginn is a system for building agents that perform automated tasks for you online. They can read the web, watch for events, and take actions on your behalf. Huginn's Agents create and consume events, propagating them along a directed graph. Think of it as a hackable version of IFTTT or Zapier on your own server. You always know who has your data. You do. Here are some of the things that you can do with Huginn: Track the weather and get an email when it's going to rain (or snow) tomorrow ("Don't forget your umbrella!") List terms that you care about and receive email when their occurrence on…
read the full huginn overview →
About Apache SkyWalking
Apache SkyWalking ========== SkyWalking : an APM (Application Performance Monitoring) system, especially designed for microservices, cloud native and container based architectures. Abstract SkyWalking is an open source APM system that provides monitoring, tracing and diagnosing capabilities for distributed systems in Cloud Native architectures. Distributed Tracing End to end distributed tracing. Service topology analysis, service centric observability and APIs dashboards. Agents for your stack Java, .Net Core, PHP, NodeJS, Golang, LUA, Rust, C++, Client JavaScript and Python agents with active development and…
read the full Apache SkyWalking overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Monitoring & Observability projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Monitoring & Observability field.
Frequently asked questions
Is huginn or Apache SkyWalking more popular?
huginn has 50,269 GitHub stars and Apache SkyWalking has 24,984. huginn has the larger community by that measure.
Are huginn and Apache SkyWalking free?
Both are open source. huginn is licensed under MIT and Apache SkyWalking under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between huginn and Apache SkyWalking?
huginn is written in Ruby 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, huginn or Apache SkyWalking?
Choose huginn if you want the larger community (50,269 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.