head to head · open source
NetData vs zipkin
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars, 6,630 forks, 393 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zipkin has 17,461 stars, 3,098 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. NetData leads on adoption by 361% (80,561 vs 17,461 stars). NetData is written in Go under GPL-3.0; zipkin is written in Java under Apache-2.0. NetData has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, zipkin 18%. NetData was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| NetData | zipkin | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 17K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 3.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick NetData if
- You weight community size — 81K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick zipkin if
- You want the zipkin 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 zipkin fits your workflow better
About NetData
Netdata is an open source, real time infrastructure monitoring platform written in Go and released under GPL 3.0, built for operators and lean teams who need per second visibility across Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, and Windows systems.
read the full NetData overview →
About zipkin
Zipkin is a distributed tracing system maintained under the OpenZipkin organization and written in Java, released under the Apache 2.0 license. It lives in the Java and JVM ecosystem as a standalone server, while its instrumentation libraries span many languages. The project gathers the timing data needed to troubleshoot latency problems in service architectures, and it covers both the collection and the lookup of that data.
read the full zipkin overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NetData or zipkin more popular?
NetData has 80,561 GitHub stars and zipkin has 17,461. NetData has the larger community by that measure.
Are NetData and zipkin free?
Both are open source. NetData is licensed under GPL-3.0 and zipkin under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NetData and zipkin?
NetData is written in Go and zipkin 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, NetData or zipkin?
Choose NetData if you want the larger community (80,561 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose zipkin if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.