head to head · open source
Sentry vs zipkin
Sentry has 45,697 GitHub stars, 4,959 forks, 2,265 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zipkin has 17,476 stars, 3,092 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. Sentry leads on adoption by 161% (45,697 vs 17,476 stars). Sentry is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; zipkin is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Sentry has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, zipkin 18%. Sentry 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
| Sentry | zipkin | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 46K | ★ 17K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-08-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.0K | ⑂ 3.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Sentry if
- You weight community size — 46K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- 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 Sentry
Users and logs provide clues. Sentry provides answers. What's Sentry? Sentry is the debugging platform that helps every developer detect, trace, and fix issues. Code breaks, fix it faster. Official Sentry SDKs JavaScript Electron React Native Python Ruby PHP Laravel Go Rust Java/Kotlin Objective C/Swift C\ /F\ C/C++ Dart/Flutter Perl Clojure Elixir Unity Unreal Engine Godot Engine PowerShell Resources Documentation Discussions (Bugs, feature requests, general questions) Discord Contributing Bug Tracker Code Transifex (Translate Sentry\!)
read the full Sentry overview →
About zipkin
zipkin Zipkin is a distributed tracing system. It helps gather timing data needed to troubleshoot latency problems in service architectures. Features include both the collection and lookup of this data. If you have a trace ID in a log file, you can jump directly to it. Otherwise, you can query based on attributes such as service, operation name, tags and duration. Some interesting data will be summarized for you, such as the percentage of time spent in a service, and whether operations failed. The Zipkin UI also presents a dependency diagram showing how many traced requests went through each application. This…
read the full zipkin overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Sentry or zipkin more popular?
Sentry has 45,697 GitHub stars and zipkin has 17,476. Sentry has the larger community by that measure.
Are Sentry and zipkin free?
Both are open source. Sentry has no licence declared in this registry, and zipkin is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Sentry and zipkin?
Sentry is written in Python 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, Sentry or zipkin?
Choose Sentry if you want the larger community (45,697 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose zipkin if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.