head to head · open source
jaeger vs Vector
jaeger has 23,218 GitHub stars, 3,121 forks, 547 open issues and last shipped today. Vector has 22,581 stars, 2,285 forks, 2,512 open issues and last shipped today. jaeger leads on adoption by 3% (23,218 vs 22,581 stars). jaeger is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Vector is written in Rust under MPL-2.0. jaeger has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, Vector 10%. jaeger was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (hacktoberfest), 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
| jaeger | Vector | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 23K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick jaeger if
- You weight community size — 23K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Vector if
- You want the Vector feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Vector fits your workflow better
About jaeger
Jaeger is a distributed tracing platform hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), where it graduated as the 7th top level project in October 2019. It was originally created by Uber Technologies and then donated to the CNCF. The project is written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license, and it lives in the OpenTelemetry and observability ecosystem: it consumes traces from OpenTelemetry SDKs and reuses components from the OpenTelemetry Collector. Its repository carries topics including cncf, distributed tracing, jaeger, observability, opentelemetry and tracing, and the project is openly gove…
read the full jaeger overview →
About Vector
Vector is an open source observability data pipeline written in Rust and licensed under MPL 2.0. It operates as an end to end system for collecting, transforming, and routing logs and metrics within the cloud native monitoring ecosystem. The project is maintained by Datadog's Community Open Source Engineering team, and its topics include agent, cloud native, data transformation, datadog, etl, events, forwarder, logs, metrics, and monitoring.
read the full Vector overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jaeger or Vector more popular?
jaeger has 23,218 GitHub stars and Vector has 22,581. jaeger has the larger community by that measure.
Are jaeger and Vector free?
Both are open source. jaeger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Vector under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jaeger and Vector?
jaeger is written in Go and Vector 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, jaeger or Vector?
Choose jaeger if you want the larger community (23,218 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Vector if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.