head to head · open source
jaeger vs mulog
jaeger has 23,223 GitHub stars, 3,122 forks, 547 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. mulog has 540 stars, 49 forks, 12 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. jaeger leads on adoption by 4,201% (23,223 vs 540 stars). jaeger is written in Go under Apache-2.0; mulog is written in Clojure under Apache-2.0. jaeger has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, mulog 9%. jaeger 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 | mulog | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 540 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Clojure |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-06-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 49 |
| 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 mulog if
- You want the mulog feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Clojure
- You evaluated both and mulog 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 mulog
μ/log is an Apache 2.0 Clojure micro logging library that logs events and data points rather than formatted words, aimed at Clojure developers building distributed systems who want logs, metrics and traces to come out of one event stream.
read the full mulog overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jaeger or mulog more popular?
jaeger has 23,223 GitHub stars and mulog has 540. jaeger has the larger community by that measure.
Are jaeger and mulog free?
Both are open source. jaeger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and mulog under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jaeger and mulog?
jaeger is written in Go and mulog in Clojure. 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 mulog?
Choose jaeger if you want the larger community (23,223 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose mulog if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.