head to head · open source
SigNoz vs btrace
SigNoz has 32,146 GitHub stars, 2,497 forks, 1,557 open issues and last shipped today. btrace has 5,995 stars, 956 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped yesterday. SigNoz leads on adoption by 436% (32,146 vs 5,995 stars). SigNoz is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; btrace is written in Java under Apache-2.0. SigNoz has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, btrace 16%. SigNoz 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
| SigNoz | btrace | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 6.0K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.5K | ⑂ 956 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick SigNoz if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick btrace if
- You want the btrace 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 btrace fits your workflow better
About SigNoz
SigNoz is an open source, OpenTelemetry native observability platform for cloud native applications. It unifies logs, metrics, traces, alerts, and dashboards into a single tool, replacing fragmented monitoring stacks with a correlated signal pipeline. It lives in the observability ecosystem alongside tools like Prometheus, Jaeger, and Grafana, and is positioned as an open alternative to Datadog.
read the full SigNoz overview →
About btrace
BTrace is an open source dynamic tracing and diagnostics tool for Java applications, distributed under the Apache 2.0 license and maintained in the Java and JVM ecosystem. It works by attaching to a running Java Virtual Machine and dynamically instrumenting bytecode at runtime, injecting tracing code into classes that are already loaded. The project sits in the Infrastructure & Operations / Monitoring & Observability category and carries the topics tracing, observability, diagnostics, profiling, bytecode instrumentation, runtime instrumentation, java agent and dtrace.
read the full btrace overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is SigNoz or btrace more popular?
SigNoz has 32,146 GitHub stars and btrace has 5,995. SigNoz has the larger community by that measure.
Are SigNoz and btrace free?
Both are open source. SigNoz has no licence declared in this registry, and btrace is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between SigNoz and btrace?
SigNoz is written in TypeScript and btrace 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, SigNoz or btrace?
Choose SigNoz if you want the larger community (32,146 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose btrace if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.