head to head · open source
Apache SkyWalking vs zipkin
Apache SkyWalking has 24,984 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zipkin has 17,476 stars, 3,092 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. Apache SkyWalking leads on adoption by 43% (24,984 vs 17,476 stars). Apache SkyWalking is written in Java under Apache-2.0; zipkin is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Apache SkyWalking has attracted 27% as many forks as stars, zipkin 18%. Apache SkyWalking was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (distributed-tracing, 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 | zipkin | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 17K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-08-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 3.1K |
| 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 zipkin if
- You want the zipkin 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 zipkin 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 zipkin
zipkin Zipkin is a distributed tracing system. It helps gather timing data needed to troubleshoot latency problems in service architectures. Features include both the collection and lookup of this data. If you have a trace ID in a log file, you can jump directly to it. Otherwise, you can query based on attributes such as service, operation name, tags and duration. Some interesting data will be summarized for you, such as the percentage of time spent in a service, and whether operations failed. The Zipkin UI also presents a dependency diagram showing how many traced requests went through each application. This…
read the full zipkin overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Apache SkyWalking or zipkin more popular?
Apache SkyWalking has 24,984 GitHub stars and zipkin has 17,476. Apache SkyWalking has the larger community by that measure.
Are Apache SkyWalking and zipkin free?
Both are open source. Apache SkyWalking is licensed under Apache-2.0 and zipkin under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Apache SkyWalking and zipkin?
Apache SkyWalking is written in Java and zipkin 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, Apache SkyWalking or zipkin?
Choose Apache SkyWalking if you want the larger community (24,984 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose zipkin if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.