head to head · open source
huginn vs btrace
huginn has 50,258 GitHub stars, 4,338 forks, 698 open issues and last shipped yesterday. btrace has 5,997 stars, 953 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped yesterday. huginn leads on adoption by 738% (50,258 vs 5,997 stars). huginn is written in Ruby under MIT; btrace is written in Java under Apache-2.0. huginn has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, btrace 16%. btrace 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 | btrace | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 6.0K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 953 |
| 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 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 huginn
What is Huginn? Huginn is a system for building agents that perform automated tasks for you online. They can read the web, watch for events, and take actions on your behalf. Huginn's Agents create and consume events, propagating them along a directed graph. Think of it as a hackable version of IFTTT or Zapier on your own server. You always know who has your data. You do. Here are some of the things that you can do with Huginn: Track the weather and get an email when it's going to rain (or snow) tomorrow ("Don't forget your umbrella!") List terms that you care about and receive email when their occurrence on…
read the full huginn 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 huginn or btrace more popular?
huginn has 50,258 GitHub stars and btrace has 5,997. huginn has the larger community by that measure.
Are huginn and btrace free?
Both are open source. huginn is licensed under MIT and btrace under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between huginn and btrace?
huginn is written in Ruby 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, huginn or btrace?
Choose huginn if you want the larger community (50,258 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose btrace if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.