head to head · open source
beszel vs Apache SkyWalking
beszel has 26,783 GitHub stars, 1,138 forks, 313 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Apache SkyWalking has 24,984 stars, 6,630 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped yesterday. beszel leads on adoption by 7% (26,783 vs 24,984 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%. 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.
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Side by side
| beszel | Apache SkyWalking | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 25K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 6.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick beszel if
- You weight community size — 27K 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 Beszel is a lightweight server monitoring platform that includes Docker statistics, historical data, and alert functions. It has a friendly web interface, simple configuration, and is ready to use out of the box. It supports automatic backup, multi user, OAuth authentication, and API access. Features Lightweight : Smaller and less resource intensive than leading solutions. Simple : Easy setup with little manual configuration required. Docker stats : Tracks CPU, memory, and network usage history for each container. ZFS : Tracks pool capacity, health, and I/O, plus per dataset usage. Alerts : Configurable…
read the full beszel 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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is beszel or Apache SkyWalking more popular?
beszel has 26,783 GitHub stars and Apache SkyWalking has 24,984. 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 (26,783 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.