head to head · open source
jaeger vs pinpoint
jaeger has 23,223 GitHub stars, 3,122 forks, 547 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. pinpoint has 13,872 stars, 3,749 forks, 543 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jaeger leads on adoption by 67% (23,223 vs 13,872 stars). jaeger is written in Go under Apache-2.0; pinpoint is written in Java under Apache-2.0. jaeger has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, pinpoint 27%. pinpoint 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, 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 | pinpoint | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 14K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 3.7K |
| 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 pinpoint if
- You want the pinpoint feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and pinpoint 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 pinpoint
Pinpoint is an open source Application Performance Management (APM) tool built for large scale distributed systems. It is written primarily in Java and also supports applications written in PHP and Python through a separate agent repository. Inspired by Google's Dapper, it provides a way to analyze the overall structure of a system and how the components inside it are interconnected by tracing transactions across distributed applications. The project lives in the Java ecosystem, is licensed under Apache 2.0, and has been developed for around twelve years, with its current stable release being v3.1.0.…
read the full pinpoint overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jaeger or pinpoint more popular?
jaeger has 23,223 GitHub stars and pinpoint has 13,872. jaeger has the larger community by that measure.
Are jaeger and pinpoint free?
Both are open source. jaeger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and pinpoint under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jaeger and pinpoint?
jaeger is written in Go and pinpoint in Java. 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 pinpoint?
Choose jaeger if you want the larger community (23,223 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose pinpoint if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.