head to head · open source
pinpoint vs magic-trace
pinpoint has 13,872 GitHub stars, 3,749 forks, 543 open issues and last shipped yesterday. magic-trace has 6,273 stars, 209 forks, 70 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. pinpoint leads on adoption by 121% (13,872 vs 6,273 stars). pinpoint is written in Java under Apache-2.0; magic-trace is written in OCaml under MIT. pinpoint has attracted 27% as many forks as stars, magic-trace 3%. pinpoint was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (tracing), 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
| pinpoint | magic-trace | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 14K | ★ 6.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | OCaml |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-08-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.7K | ⑂ 209 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick pinpoint if
- You weight community size — 14K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick magic-trace if
- You want the magic-trace feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches OCaml
- You evaluated both and magic-trace fits your workflow better
About pinpoint
Pinpoint is an open source Application Performance Management (APM) tool built for large scale distributed systems. It is written primarily in Java and also supports applications written in PHP and Python through a separate agent repository. Inspired by Google's Dapper, it provides a way to analyze the overall structure of a system and how the components inside it are interconnected by tracing transactions across distributed applications. The project lives in the Java ecosystem, is licensed under Apache 2.0, and has been developed for around twelve years, with its current stable release being v3.1.0.…
read the full pinpoint overview →
About magic-trace
magic trace is an open source tracing tool, written in OCaml and released under the MIT license, that collects and displays high resolution traces of what a process is doing. It lives in the Linux performance tooling ecosystem and sits alongside perf , which it uses under the hood to drive Intel Processor Trace. Rather than sampling call stacks throughout time, magic trace snapshots a ring buffer of all control flow leading up to a chosen point in time, then renders an interactive timeline of call stacks going back a configurable span of roughly 10ms, at approximately 40ns resolution.
read the full magic-trace overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is pinpoint or magic-trace more popular?
pinpoint has 13,872 GitHub stars and magic-trace has 6,273. pinpoint has the larger community by that measure.
Are pinpoint and magic-trace free?
Both are open source. pinpoint is licensed under Apache-2.0 and magic-trace under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between pinpoint and magic-trace?
pinpoint is written in Java and magic-trace in OCaml. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, pinpoint or magic-trace?
Choose pinpoint if you want the larger community (13,872 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose magic-trace if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.