head to head · open source
jaeger vs witr
jaeger has 23,217 GitHub stars, 3,119 forks, 547 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. witr has 22,374 stars, 781 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. jaeger leads on adoption by 4% (23,217 vs 22,374 stars). jaeger is written in Go under Apache-2.0; witr is written in Go under Apache-2.0. jaeger has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, witr 3%. 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 | witr | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 22K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-08-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 781 |
| 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 witr if
- You want the witr feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and witr 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 witr
witr is an open source, Apache 2.0 licensed Go tool with both a command line interface and an interactive terminal UI that traces any process, port, container, or file back to the exact chain of systems that started it, and it is built for operators, SREs, and developers who need to answer "why is this running?" during debugging and incident response.
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Frequently asked questions
Is jaeger or witr more popular?
jaeger has 23,217 GitHub stars and witr has 22,374. jaeger has the larger community by that measure.
Are jaeger and witr free?
Both are open source. jaeger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and witr under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jaeger and witr?
jaeger is written in Go and witr in Go. 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 witr?
Choose jaeger if you want the larger community (23,217 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose witr if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.