head to head · open source
jaeger vs pup
jaeger has 23,223 GitHub stars, 3,122 forks, 547 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. pup has 1,014 stars, 121 forks, 12 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. jaeger leads on adoption by 2,190% (23,223 vs 1,014 stars). jaeger is written in Go under Apache-2.0; pup is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. jaeger has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, pup 12%. pup 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| jaeger | pup | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 121 |
| 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 pup if
- You want the pup feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and pup 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 pup
Pup is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Rust written command line client from Datadog that exposes more than 200 commands across over 33 Datadog product domains, letting AI agents and the humans who supervise them query observability data from a terminal.
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Monitoring & Observability projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Monitoring & Observability field.
Frequently asked questions
Is jaeger or pup more popular?
jaeger has 23,223 GitHub stars and pup has 1,014. jaeger has the larger community by that measure.
Are jaeger and pup free?
Both are open source. jaeger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and pup under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jaeger and pup?
jaeger is written in Go and pup in Rust. 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 pup?
Choose jaeger if you want the larger community (23,223 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose pup if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.