head to head · open source
jaeger vs voltagent
jaeger has 23,223 GitHub stars, 3,122 forks, 547 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. voltagent has 10,647 stars, 1,135 forks, 86 open issues and last shipped 24 days ago. jaeger leads on adoption by 118% (23,223 vs 10,647 stars). jaeger is written in Go under Apache-2.0; voltagent is written in TypeScript under MIT. jaeger has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, voltagent 11%. jaeger 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
| jaeger | voltagent | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 11K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-08-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 voltagent if
- You want the voltagent feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and voltagent 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 voltagent
VoltAgent is an end to end AI Agent Engineering Platform built around an open source TypeScript framework. It lives in the JavaScript and TypeScript ecosystem, distributed through npm packages such as @voltagent/core and @voltagent/mcp docs server , and it is released under the MIT license. The project is roughly one year old, carries 10,619 stars and 1,126 forks on GitHub, and its most recent push landed on 27 August 2026. The platform has two halves: the open source framework, which supplies memory, RAG, guardrails, tools, MCP, voice, and workflow primitives, and the VoltOps Console, which is offered as either …
read the full voltagent overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jaeger or voltagent more popular?
jaeger has 23,223 GitHub stars and voltagent has 10,647. jaeger has the larger community by that measure.
Are jaeger and voltagent free?
Both are open source. jaeger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and voltagent under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jaeger and voltagent?
jaeger is written in Go and voltagent 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, jaeger or voltagent?
Choose jaeger if you want the larger community (23,223 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose voltagent if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.