head to head · open source
jaeger vs parca
jaeger has 23,375 GitHub stars, 3,223 forks, 547 open issues and last shipped yesterday. parca has 5,007 stars, 271 forks, 206 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jaeger leads on adoption by 367% (23,375 vs 5,007 stars). jaeger is written in Go under Apache-2.0; parca is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. jaeger has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, parca 5%. parca 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.
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Side by side
| jaeger | parca | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 5.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 271 |
| 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 parca if
- You want the parca feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and parca 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 parca
Continuous profiling for analysis of CPU, memory usage over time, and down to the line number. Saving infrastructure cost, improving performance, and increasing reliability. Features eBPF Profiler : A single profiler, using eBPF, automatically discovering targets from Kubernetes or systemd across the entire infrastructure with very low overhead. Supports C, C++, Rust, Go, and more! Open Standards : Both producing pprof formatted profiles with the eBPF based profiler, and ingesting any pprof formatted profiles allowing for wide language adoption and interoperability with existing tooling. Optimized Storage &…
read the full parca overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jaeger or parca more popular?
jaeger has 23,375 GitHub stars and parca has 5,007. jaeger has the larger community by that measure.
Are jaeger and parca free?
Both are open source. jaeger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and parca under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jaeger and parca?
jaeger is written in Go and parca 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 parca?
Choose jaeger if you want the larger community (23,375 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose parca if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.