head to head · open source
jaeger vs loongcollector
jaeger has 23,223 GitHub stars, 3,122 forks, 547 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. loongcollector has 2,196 stars, 450 forks, 166 open issues and last shipped today. jaeger leads on adoption by 958% (23,223 vs 2,196 stars). jaeger is written in Go under Apache-2.0; loongcollector is written in C++ under Apache-2.0. jaeger has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, loongcollector 20%. loongcollector 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| jaeger | loongcollector | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 2.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 450 |
| 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 loongcollector if
- You want the loongcollector feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and loongcollector 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 loongcollector
LoongCollector is an Apache 2.0, C++ based observability data collector from Alibaba that runs as a universal node agent for logs, metrics, traces, events and profiles, and it is built for platform, SRE and security teams operating Kubernetes clusters and high volume production fleets.
read the full loongcollector overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Monitoring & Observability projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Monitoring & Observability field.
Frequently asked questions
Is jaeger or loongcollector more popular?
jaeger has 23,223 GitHub stars and loongcollector has 2,196. jaeger has the larger community by that measure.
Are jaeger and loongcollector free?
Both are open source. jaeger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and loongcollector under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jaeger and loongcollector?
jaeger is written in Go and loongcollector in C++. 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 loongcollector?
Choose jaeger if you want the larger community (23,223 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose loongcollector if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.