head to head · open source
jaeger vs opentelemetry-cpp
jaeger has 23,223 GitHub stars, 3,122 forks, 547 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. opentelemetry-cpp has 1,378 stars, 632 forks, 290 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jaeger leads on adoption by 1,585% (23,223 vs 1,378 stars). jaeger is written in Go under Apache-2.0; opentelemetry-cpp is written in C++ under Apache-2.0. jaeger has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, opentelemetry-cpp 46%. opentelemetry-cpp was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (distributed-tracing, opentelemetry), 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 | opentelemetry-cpp | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 632 |
| 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 opentelemetry-cpp if
- You want the opentelemetry-cpp 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 opentelemetry-cpp 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 opentelemetry-cpp
OpenTelemetry C++ is the official C++ client for OpenTelemetry, the vendor neutral observability framework, and it is built for C++ application owners and library authors who need to emit logs, metrics, and traces from native code.
read the full opentelemetry-cpp overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jaeger or opentelemetry-cpp more popular?
jaeger has 23,223 GitHub stars and opentelemetry-cpp has 1,378. jaeger has the larger community by that measure.
Are jaeger and opentelemetry-cpp free?
Both are open source. jaeger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and opentelemetry-cpp under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jaeger and opentelemetry-cpp?
jaeger is written in Go and opentelemetry-cpp 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 opentelemetry-cpp?
Choose jaeger if you want the larger community (23,223 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose opentelemetry-cpp if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.