head to head · open source
zipkin vs codeburn
zipkin has 17,464 GitHub stars, 3,098 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. codeburn has 11,114 stars, 843 forks, 29 open issues and last shipped today. zipkin leads on adoption by 57% (17,464 vs 11,114 stars). zipkin is written in Java under Apache-2.0; codeburn is written in TypeScript under MIT. zipkin has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, codeburn 8%. codeburn was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (observability), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| zipkin | codeburn | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 11K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-08-06 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 843 |
| 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 codeburn if
- You want the codeburn feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and codeburn 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 codeburn
CodeBurn is a free, open source, local first tool that tracks AI coding token usage and cost across 41 tools and agents, including Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini, and Grok. It is written in TypeScript, licensed under MIT, and lives in the developer tools and observability ecosystem as a command line utility with optional desktop surfaces. Every surface reads the session files that the supported tools already write to disk, so CodeBurn acts as one source of truth rather than a separate collection layer.
read the full codeburn overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Monitoring & Observability projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Monitoring & Observability field.
Frequently asked questions
Is zipkin or codeburn more popular?
zipkin has 17,464 GitHub stars and codeburn has 11,114. zipkin has the larger community by that measure.
Are zipkin and codeburn free?
Both are open source. zipkin is licensed under Apache-2.0 and codeburn under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between zipkin and codeburn?
zipkin is written in Java and codeburn 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, zipkin or codeburn?
Choose zipkin if you want the larger community (17,464 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose codeburn if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.