head to head · open source
jaeger vs gf
jaeger has 23,223 GitHub stars, 3,122 forks, 547 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. gf has 13,277 stars, 1,719 forks, 148 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. jaeger leads on adoption by 75% (23,223 vs 13,277 stars). jaeger is written in Go under Apache-2.0; gf is written in Go under MIT. jaeger has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, gf 13%. jaeger was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (opentelemetry, tracing), 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
| jaeger | gf | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 13K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 1.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick jaeger if
- You weight community size — 23K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick gf if
- You want the gf feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and gf fits your workflow better
About jaeger
Jaeger is a distributed tracing platform hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), where it graduated as the 7th top level project in October 2019. It was originally created by Uber Technologies and then donated to the CNCF. The project is written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license, and it lives in the OpenTelemetry and observability ecosystem: it consumes traces from OpenTelemetry SDKs and reuses components from the OpenTelemetry Collector. Its repository carries topics including cncf, distributed tracing, jaeger, observability, opentelemetry and tracing, and the project is openly gove…
read the full jaeger overview →
About gf
GoFrame is an MIT licensed, production ready application framework for the Go programming language that provides a full stack toolkit — HTTP server, ORM, logging, tracing, and command line scaffolding — in a single dependency, aimed at Go teams that want one coherent framework instead of assembling many separate libraries.
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Frequently asked questions
Is jaeger or gf more popular?
jaeger has 23,223 GitHub stars and gf has 13,277. jaeger has the larger community by that measure.
Are jaeger and gf free?
Both are open source. jaeger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and gf under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jaeger and gf?
jaeger is written in Go and gf in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, jaeger or gf?
Choose jaeger if you want the larger community (23,223 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose gf if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.