head to head · open source
jaeger vs OpenObserve
jaeger has 23,217 GitHub stars, 3,119 forks, 547 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. OpenObserve has 21,993 stars, 1,091 forks, 598 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jaeger leads on adoption by 6% (23,217 vs 21,993 stars). jaeger is written in Go under Apache-2.0; OpenObserve is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. jaeger has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, OpenObserve 5%. OpenObserve was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (jaeger), 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 | OpenObserve | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 22K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 OpenObserve if
- You want the OpenObserve feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and OpenObserve 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 OpenObserve
OpenObserve is an open source observability platform for logs, metrics, traces, analytics, Real User Monitoring, session replay, pipelines, SLO, and LLM observability. It lives in the cloud native infrastructure ecosystem and is described as an alternative to Datadog, Splunk, and Elasticsearch. The project is built in Rust, ships as a single binary, and uses Parquet columnar storage with an S3 native design.
read the full OpenObserve overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jaeger or OpenObserve more popular?
jaeger has 23,217 GitHub stars and OpenObserve has 21,993. jaeger has the larger community by that measure.
Are jaeger and OpenObserve free?
Both are open source. jaeger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and OpenObserve under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jaeger and OpenObserve?
jaeger is written in Go and OpenObserve in TypeScript. 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 OpenObserve?
Choose jaeger if you want the larger community (23,217 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose OpenObserve if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.