head to head · open source
jaeger vs retina
jaeger has 23,368 GitHub stars, 3,222 forks, 547 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. retina has 3,185 stars, 308 forks, 190 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. jaeger leads on adoption by 634% (23,368 vs 3,185 stars). jaeger is written in Go under Apache-2.0; retina is written in Go under MIT. jaeger has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, retina 10%. retina 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 | retina | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 3.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 308 |
| 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 retina if
- You want the retina feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and retina 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 retina
[![goreport][goreport img]][goreport] ![GitHub release][release img] [![retina publish][godoc badge]][godoc] ![license] [![retina test][retina test image badge]][retina test image] [![retinash][retinash badge]][retinash] [![retina publish][retina publish badge]][retina publish] ![retina codeql img][retina codeql badge] ![retina golangci lint img][retina golangci lint badge] Overview Retina is a cloud agnostic, open source Kubernetes network observability platform that provides a centralized hub for monitoring application health, network health, and security . It provides actionable insights to cluster network…
read the full retina overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jaeger or retina more popular?
jaeger has 23,368 GitHub stars and retina has 3,185. jaeger has the larger community by that measure.
Are jaeger and retina free?
Both are open source. jaeger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and retina under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jaeger and retina?
jaeger is written in Go and retina in Go. 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 retina?
Choose jaeger if you want the larger community (23,368 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose retina if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.