head to head · open source
SigNoz vs effect
SigNoz has 32,116 GitHub stars, 2,493 forks, 1,557 open issues and last shipped yesterday. effect has 16,097 stars, 747 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. SigNoz leads on adoption by 100% (32,116 vs 16,097 stars). SigNoz is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; effect is written in TypeScript under MIT. SigNoz has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, effect 5%. 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| SigNoz | effect | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 16K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.5K | ⑂ 747 |
| 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 effect if
- You want the effect feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and effect 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 effect
Effect is a TypeScript library for building robust, maintainable, type safe, and production grade applications. It lives in the TypeScript and JavaScript ecosystem, distributed as the core effect package alongside a monorepo of integration packages that extend it. The project is MIT licensed, has been developed for roughly seven years, and currently ships Effect V4 as a release candidate, with the main branch holding v4 development and the v3 branch retaining the previous line.
read the full effect overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Monitoring & Observability projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Monitoring & Observability field.
Frequently asked questions
Is SigNoz or effect more popular?
SigNoz has 32,116 GitHub stars and effect has 16,097. SigNoz has the larger community by that measure.
Are SigNoz and effect free?
Both are open source. SigNoz has no licence declared in this registry, and effect is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between SigNoz and effect?
SigNoz is written in TypeScript and effect in TypeScript. 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 effect?
Choose SigNoz if you want the larger community (32,116 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose effect if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.