head to head · open source
Apache SkyWalking vs phantomas
Apache SkyWalking has 24,988 GitHub stars, 6,632 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. phantomas has 2,263 stars, 133 forks, 65 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Apache SkyWalking leads on adoption by 1,004% (24,988 vs 2,263 stars). Apache SkyWalking is written in Java under Apache-2.0; phantomas is written in JavaScript under BSD-2-Clause. Apache SkyWalking has attracted 27% as many forks as stars, phantomas 6%. phantomas was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (metrics), 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 | phantomas | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 2.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | Java | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 133 |
| 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 phantomas if
- You want the phantomas feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and phantomas fits your workflow better
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 →
About phantomas
phantomas ========= Headless Chromium based modular web performance metrics collector. And why phantomas? Well, because :) Requirements NodeJS 16+ Installation Via npm This will install a recent version of Chromium supported by puppeteer module. Via Docker You can use phantomas Docker image: Or you can fetch from GitHub's Containers registry Support You can get support for phantomas via xs:code. Usage example Or run ./examples/index.js . Development version To get the latest development version of phantomas (and install all required dependencies): Running tests First you need to start a local nginx container…
read the full phantomas overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Apache SkyWalking or phantomas more popular?
Apache SkyWalking has 24,988 GitHub stars and phantomas has 2,263. Apache SkyWalking has the larger community by that measure.
Are Apache SkyWalking and phantomas free?
Both are open source. Apache SkyWalking is licensed under Apache-2.0 and phantomas under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Apache SkyWalking and phantomas?
Apache SkyWalking is written in Java and phantomas in JavaScript. 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 phantomas?
Choose Apache SkyWalking if you want the larger community (24,988 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose phantomas if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.