head to head · open source
zipkin vs btrace
zipkin has 17,464 GitHub stars, 3,098 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. btrace has 5,995 stars, 956 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zipkin leads on adoption by 191% (17,464 vs 5,995 stars). zipkin is written in Java under Apache-2.0; btrace is written in Java under Apache-2.0. zipkin has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, btrace 16%. btrace was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (observability, tracing), 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
| zipkin | btrace | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 6.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Java |
| Last push | 2026-08-06 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 956 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick zipkin if
- You weight community size — 17K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick btrace if
- You want the btrace 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 btrace fits your workflow better
About zipkin
Zipkin is a distributed tracing system maintained under the OpenZipkin organization and written in Java, released under the Apache 2.0 license. It lives in the Java and JVM ecosystem as a standalone server, while its instrumentation libraries span many languages. The project gathers the timing data needed to troubleshoot latency problems in service architectures, and it covers both the collection and the lookup of that data.
read the full zipkin overview →
About btrace
BTrace is an open source dynamic tracing and diagnostics tool for Java applications, distributed under the Apache 2.0 license and maintained in the Java and JVM ecosystem. It works by attaching to a running Java Virtual Machine and dynamically instrumenting bytecode at runtime, injecting tracing code into classes that are already loaded. The project sits in the Infrastructure & Operations / Monitoring & Observability category and carries the topics tracing, observability, diagnostics, profiling, bytecode instrumentation, runtime instrumentation, java agent and dtrace.
read the full btrace overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is zipkin or btrace more popular?
zipkin has 17,464 GitHub stars and btrace has 5,995. zipkin has the larger community by that measure.
Are zipkin and btrace free?
Both are open source. zipkin is licensed under Apache-2.0 and btrace under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between zipkin and btrace?
zipkin is written in Java and btrace 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, zipkin or btrace?
Choose zipkin if you want the larger community (17,464 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose btrace if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.