head to head · open source
effect vs btrace
effect has 17,476 GitHub stars, 895 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. btrace has 5,997 stars, 953 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. effect leads on adoption by 191% (17,476 vs 5,997 stars). effect is written in TypeScript under MIT; btrace is written in Java under Apache-2.0. effect has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, btrace 16%. effect was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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
| effect | btrace | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 6.0K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 895 | ⑂ 953 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick effect if
- You weight community size — 17K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick btrace if
- You want the btrace 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 btrace fits your workflow better
About effect
Effect Effect is a library for building robust, maintainable, type safe, and production grade applications in TypeScript. It helps you handle the hard problems at scale: typed errors, dependency injection, structured concurrency, scheduling, tracing, and unified schema validation. Effect V4 is currently a release candidate. The main branch contains v4 development. Install V4 RC Requirements TypeScript 5.9 or newer. TypeScript 7 is recommended for the best performance and compatibility with Effect's TypeScript tooling. Node.js 18 or newer is the general minimum for running Effect on Node.js. Some integration…
read the full effect overview →
About btrace
BTrace Safe, dynamic tracing for Java applications BTrace dynamically instruments running Java applications to inject tracing code at runtime. No restarts. No recompilation. Production safe. Quick links: Quick Reference · Step by Step Tutorial Why BTrace? Zero downtime Attach to running JVMs without restart Production safe Verified scripts can't crash your application Flexible probes Method entry/exit, timings, field access, allocations Low overhead Bytecode injection with minimal performance impact Supported Java Versions BTrace 3.0 runs on Java 8–25+. Running BTrace against a JVM older than Java 17 is…
read the full btrace overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is effect or btrace more popular?
effect has 17,476 GitHub stars and btrace has 5,997. effect has the larger community by that measure.
Are effect and btrace free?
Both are open source. effect is licensed under MIT and btrace under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between effect and btrace?
effect is written in TypeScript and btrace 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, effect or btrace?
Choose effect if you want the larger community (17,476 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose btrace if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.