head to head · open source
jaeger vs kiali
jaeger has 23,223 GitHub stars, 3,122 forks, 547 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. kiali has 3,637 stars, 570 forks, 79 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. jaeger leads on adoption by 539% (23,223 vs 3,637 stars). jaeger is written in Go under Apache-2.0; kiali is written in Go under Apache-2.0. jaeger has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, kiali 16%. kiali was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (observability), 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 | kiali | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 3.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 570 |
| 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 kiali if
- You want the kiali feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and kiali 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 kiali
Kiali is a management console and observability interface for Istio service meshes, aimed at developers who work on the project and at operators who run Istio on Kubernetes and OpenShift clusters.
read the full kiali overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jaeger or kiali more popular?
jaeger has 23,223 GitHub stars and kiali has 3,637. jaeger has the larger community by that measure.
Are jaeger and kiali free?
Both are open source. jaeger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and kiali under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jaeger and kiali?
jaeger is written in Go and kiali 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 kiali?
Choose jaeger if you want the larger community (23,223 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose kiali if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.