head to head · open source
jaeger vs ratel
jaeger has 23,408 GitHub stars, 3,247 forks, 547 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ratel has 563 stars, 32 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. jaeger leads on adoption by 4,058% (23,408 vs 563 stars). jaeger is written in Go under Apache-2.0; ratel is written in TypeScript under MIT. jaeger has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, ratel 6%. jaeger was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (observability, 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 | ratel | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 563 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-14 | 2026-11-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 32 |
| 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 ratel if
- You want the ratel feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and ratel 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 ratel
Ratel See what your AI agent gets wrong, and what to change. On your own infrastructure. Docs • Skills • Discord Introduction Ratel is a self hosted platform for AI agents. Your agent sends it traces and its catalog of tools and skills. Ratel reads that traffic and shows you what the agent gets wrong, what people ask it for, and which changes would make it find and finish more. It is for anyone building or running an agent who wants to see how it behaves and keep that data on their own machines. It runs as one application and one Postgres database, and it needs nothing else: Console: the pages you read and act…
read the full ratel overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jaeger or ratel more popular?
jaeger has 23,408 GitHub stars and ratel has 563. jaeger has the larger community by that measure.
Are jaeger and ratel free?
Both are open source. jaeger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and ratel under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jaeger and ratel?
jaeger is written in Go and ratel 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 ratel?
Choose jaeger if you want the larger community (23,408 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose ratel if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.