head to head · open source
huginn vs Apache SkyWalking
huginn has 49,967 GitHub stars, 4,298 forks, 698 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Apache SkyWalking has 24,955 stars, 6,634 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped yesterday. huginn leads on adoption by 100% (49,967 vs 24,955 stars). huginn is written in Ruby under MIT; Apache SkyWalking is written in Java under Apache-2.0. huginn has attracted 9% 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
| huginn | Apache SkyWalking | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 25K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 6.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick huginn if
- You weight community size — 50K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- 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 huginn
Huginn is an open source system for building agents that perform automated tasks online, written in Ruby and released under the MIT license. Its agents read the web, watch for events, and take actions on the user's behalf. Internally, agents create and consume events that propagate along a directed graph, which means one agent's output becomes another agent's input and a chain of small steps can be composed into a larger workflow. The project lives in the Ruby ecosystem and is distributed as an official Docker image or installed locally from a forked repository.
read the full huginn overview →
About Apache SkyWalking
Apache SkyWalking is an open source application performance monitoring (APM) system for distributed systems in cloud native architectures, built for teams that run microservices across Kubernetes and container based environments.
read the full Apache SkyWalking overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is huginn or Apache SkyWalking more popular?
huginn has 49,967 GitHub stars and Apache SkyWalking has 24,955. huginn has the larger community by that measure.
Are huginn and Apache SkyWalking free?
Both are open source. huginn is licensed under MIT and Apache SkyWalking under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between huginn and Apache SkyWalking?
huginn is written in Ruby 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, huginn or Apache SkyWalking?
Choose huginn if you want the larger community (49,967 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.