head to head · open source
jaeger vs hubble
jaeger has 23,368 GitHub stars, 3,222 forks, 547 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. hubble has 4,376 stars, 305 forks, 44 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. jaeger leads on adoption by 434% (23,368 vs 4,376 stars). jaeger is written in Go under Apache-2.0; hubble is written in Makefile under Apache-2.0. jaeger has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, hubble 7%. hubble was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (observability, 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 | hubble | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 4.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Makefile |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 305 |
| 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 hubble if
- You want the hubble feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Makefile
- You evaluated both and hubble fits your workflow better
About jaeger
[![Slack chat][slack img]]( get in touch) [![Unit Tests][ci img]][ci] [![Coverage Status][cov img]][cov] [![Project+Community stats][community badge]][community stats] [![FOSSA Status][fossa img]][fossa] [![OpenSSF Scorecard][openssf img]][openssf] [![OpenSSF Best Practices][openssf bp img]][openssf bp] [![CLOMonitor][clomonitor img]][clomonitor] [![Artifact Hub][artifacthub img]][artifacthub] Jaeger a Distributed Tracing System 💥💥💥 Jaeger v2 is out! Read the blog post and try it out. Quick Start Get Jaeger running in seconds with Docker: For production deployments and more options, see the Getting Started…
read the full jaeger overview →
About hubble
Network, Service & Security Observability for Kubernetes What is Hubble? Getting Started Features Service Dependency Graph Metrics & Monitoring Flow Visibility Get in touch / Community Authors What is Hubble? Hubble is a fully distributed networking and security observability platform for cloud native workloads. It is built on top of [Cilium] and [eBPF] to enable deep visibility into the communication and behavior of services as well as the networking infrastructure in a completely transparent manner. Hubble can answer questions such as: Service dependencies & communication map: What services are communicating…
read the full hubble overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jaeger or hubble more popular?
jaeger has 23,368 GitHub stars and hubble has 4,376. jaeger has the larger community by that measure.
Are jaeger and hubble free?
Both are open source. jaeger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and hubble under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jaeger and hubble?
jaeger is written in Go and hubble in Makefile. 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 hubble?
Choose jaeger if you want the larger community (23,368 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose hubble if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.