head to head · open source
worldmonitor vs zipkin
worldmonitor has 90,021 GitHub stars, 13,905 forks, 313 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zipkin has 17,476 stars, 3,092 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. worldmonitor leads on adoption by 415% (90,021 vs 17,476 stars). worldmonitor is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; zipkin is written in Java under Apache-2.0. worldmonitor has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, zipkin 18%. 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 | zipkin | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 17K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-08-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 14K | ⑂ 3.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick worldmonitor if
- You weight community size — 90K 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 zipkin if
- You want the zipkin feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and zipkin fits your workflow better
About worldmonitor
World Monitor 简体中文 日本語 Real time global intelligence dashboard — AI powered news aggregation, geopolitical monitoring, and infrastructure tracking in a unified situational awareness interface. Documentation · Releases · Contributing What It Does Curated news feeds across global and regional categories, AI synthesized into briefs Dual map engine — 3D globe (globe.gl) and WebGL flat map (deck.gl) with a shared map layer catalog Panel inventory — concrete panel implementations across specialized variants Cross stream correlation — military, economic, disaster, and escalation signal convergence Country Instability…
read the full worldmonitor overview →
About zipkin
zipkin Zipkin is a distributed tracing system. It helps gather timing data needed to troubleshoot latency problems in service architectures. Features include both the collection and lookup of this data. If you have a trace ID in a log file, you can jump directly to it. Otherwise, you can query based on attributes such as service, operation name, tags and duration. Some interesting data will be summarized for you, such as the percentage of time spent in a service, and whether operations failed. The Zipkin UI also presents a dependency diagram showing how many traced requests went through each application. This…
read the full zipkin overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is worldmonitor or zipkin more popular?
worldmonitor has 90,021 GitHub stars and zipkin has 17,476. worldmonitor has the larger community by that measure.
Are worldmonitor and zipkin free?
Both are open source. worldmonitor is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and zipkin under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between worldmonitor and zipkin?
worldmonitor is written in TypeScript and zipkin in Java. 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 zipkin?
Choose worldmonitor if you want the larger community (90,021 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose zipkin if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.