head to head · open source
effect vs pinpoint
effect has 17,464 GitHub stars, 892 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pinpoint has 13,871 stars, 3,736 forks, 543 open issues and last shipped yesterday. effect leads on adoption by 26% (17,464 vs 13,871 stars). effect is written in TypeScript under MIT; pinpoint is written in Java under Apache-2.0. effect has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, pinpoint 27%. effect 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
| effect | pinpoint | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 14K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 892 | ⑂ 3.7K |
| 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 pinpoint if
- You want the pinpoint 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 pinpoint 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 pinpoint
Latest Release (2026/05/21) We're happy to announce the release of Pinpoint v3.1.0. Please check the release note at ( The current stable version is v3.1.0. Live Demo Take a quick look at Pinpoint with our demo! PHP, PYTHON Pinpoint also supports application written in PHP, Python. Check out our agent repository. About Pinpoint Pinpoint is an APM (Application Performance Management) tool for large scale distributed systems written in Java / PHP/PYTHON). Inspired by Dapper, Pinpoint provides a solution to help analyze the overall structure of the system and how components within them are interconnected by tracing…
read the full pinpoint overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is effect or pinpoint more popular?
effect has 17,464 GitHub stars and pinpoint has 13,871. effect has the larger community by that measure.
Are effect and pinpoint free?
Both are open source. effect is licensed under MIT and pinpoint under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between effect and pinpoint?
effect is written in TypeScript and pinpoint 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 pinpoint?
Choose effect if you want the larger community (17,464 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose pinpoint if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.