head to head · open source
worldmonitor vs magic-trace
worldmonitor has 86,684 GitHub stars, 13,147 forks, 313 open issues and last shipped yesterday. magic-trace has 6,270 stars, 209 forks, 70 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. worldmonitor leads on adoption by 1,283% (86,684 vs 6,270 stars). worldmonitor is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; magic-trace is written in OCaml under MIT. worldmonitor has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, magic-trace 3%. worldmonitor 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
| worldmonitor | magic-trace | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 87K | ★ 6.3K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | OCaml |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 13K | ⑂ 209 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick worldmonitor if
- You weight community size — 87K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick magic-trace if
- You want the magic-trace feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches OCaml
- You evaluated both and magic-trace fits your workflow better
About worldmonitor
World Monitor is an open source, real time global intelligence dashboard in TypeScript that aggregates news with AI, monitors geopolitics and infrastructure, and unifies all of it into a single situational awareness interface for analysts, journalists, researchers, and operations teams who need cross domain awareness they can self host.
read the full worldmonitor overview →
About magic-trace
magic trace is an open source tracing tool, written in OCaml and released under the MIT license, that collects and displays high resolution traces of what a process is doing. It lives in the Linux performance tooling ecosystem and sits alongside perf , which it uses under the hood to drive Intel Processor Trace. Rather than sampling call stacks throughout time, magic trace snapshots a ring buffer of all control flow leading up to a chosen point in time, then renders an interactive timeline of call stacks going back a configurable span of roughly 10ms, at approximately 40ns resolution.
read the full magic-trace overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is worldmonitor or magic-trace more popular?
worldmonitor has 86,684 GitHub stars and magic-trace has 6,270. worldmonitor has the larger community by that measure.
Are worldmonitor and magic-trace free?
Both are open source. worldmonitor is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and magic-trace under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between worldmonitor and magic-trace?
worldmonitor is written in TypeScript and magic-trace in OCaml. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, worldmonitor or magic-trace?
Choose worldmonitor if you want the larger community (86,684 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose magic-trace if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.