head to head · open source
jaeger vs opentelemetry-cpp
jaeger has 23,375 GitHub stars, 3,223 forks, 547 open issues and last shipped yesterday. opentelemetry-cpp has 1,389 stars, 660 forks, 290 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jaeger leads on adoption by 1,583% (23,375 vs 1,389 stars). jaeger is written in Go under Apache-2.0; opentelemetry-cpp is written in C++ under Apache-2.0. jaeger has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, opentelemetry-cpp 48%. jaeger 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 | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 660 |
| 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
[![Slack chat][slack img]]( get in touch) [![Unit Tests][ci img]][ci] [![Coverage Status][cov img]][cov] [![Project+Community stats][community badge]][community stats] [![FOSSA Status][fossa img]][fossa] [![OpenSSF Scorecard][openssf img]][openssf] [![OpenSSF Best Practices][openssf bp img]][openssf bp] [![CLOMonitor][clomonitor img]][clomonitor] [![Artifact Hub][artifacthub img]][artifacthub] Jaeger a Distributed Tracing System 💥💥💥 Jaeger v2 is out! Read the blog post and try it out. Quick Start Get Jaeger running in seconds with Docker: For production deployments and more options, see the Getting Started…
read the full jaeger overview →
About opentelemetry-cpp
OpenTelemetry C++ The C++ OpenTelemetry client. Project Status Stable across all 3 signals i.e. Logs , Metrics , and Traces . See Spec Compliance Matrix to understand which portions of the specification has been implemented in this repo. Supported C++ Versions Code shipped from this repository generally supports the following versions of C++ standards: ISO/IEC 14882:2014 (C++14) ISO/IEC 14882:2017 (C++17) ISO/IEC 14882:2020 (C++20) ISO/IEC 14882:2024 (C++23) Any exceptions to this are noted in the individual README.md files. Please note that supporting the C Programming Language) is not a goal of the current…
read the full opentelemetry-cpp overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jaeger or opentelemetry-cpp more popular?
jaeger has 23,375 GitHub stars and opentelemetry-cpp has 1,389. 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 (23,375 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.