head to head · open source
pinpoint vs minitrace-rust
pinpoint has 13,872 GitHub stars, 3,748 forks, 543 open issues and last shipped yesterday. minitrace-rust has 751 stars, 46 forks, 13 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. pinpoint leads on adoption by 1,747% (13,872 vs 751 stars). pinpoint is written in Java under Apache-2.0; minitrace-rust is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. pinpoint has attracted 27% as many forks as stars, minitrace-rust 6%. 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 | minitrace-rust | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 14K | ★ 751 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-24 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.7K | ⑂ 46 |
| 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 minitrace-rust if
- You want the minitrace-rust feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and minitrace-rust 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 minitrace-rust
minitrace rust is an extremely fast tracing library for the Rust programming language, intended for Rust developers who need distributed tracing in their services and want that trace data to reach backends such as Jaeger or Datadog.
read the full minitrace-rust overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is pinpoint or minitrace-rust more popular?
pinpoint has 13,872 GitHub stars and minitrace-rust has 751. pinpoint has the larger community by that measure.
Are pinpoint and minitrace-rust free?
Both are open source. pinpoint is licensed under Apache-2.0 and minitrace-rust under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between pinpoint and minitrace-rust?
pinpoint is written in Java and minitrace-rust in Rust. 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 minitrace-rust?
Choose pinpoint if you want the larger community (13,872 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose minitrace-rust if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.