head to head · open source
jaeger vs tapir
jaeger has 23,223 GitHub stars, 3,122 forks, 547 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. tapir has 1,474 stars, 468 forks, 173 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. jaeger leads on adoption by 1,476% (23,223 vs 1,474 stars). jaeger is written in Go under Apache-2.0; tapir is written in Scala under Apache-2.0. jaeger has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, tapir 32%. jaeger 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 | tapir | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Scala |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 468 |
| 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 tapir if
- You want the tapir feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Scala
- You evaluated both and tapir 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 tapir
Tapir is a Scala library that lets developers describe an HTTP API once in a type safe, declarative form and then expose that description as a server, consume it as a client, and generate OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, and JSON Schema documentation from it, and it is aimed at Scala teams building HTTP services that want their API documentation to stay in step with their code.
read the full tapir overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jaeger or tapir more popular?
jaeger has 23,223 GitHub stars and tapir has 1,474. jaeger has the larger community by that measure.
Are jaeger and tapir free?
Both are open source. jaeger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and tapir under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jaeger and tapir?
jaeger is written in Go and tapir in Scala. 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 tapir?
Choose jaeger if you want the larger community (23,223 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose tapir if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.