head to head · open source
zipkin vs Gatus
zipkin has 17,461 GitHub stars, 3,098 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. Gatus has 12,095 stars, 828 forks, 382 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. zipkin leads on adoption by 44% (17,461 vs 12,095 stars). zipkin is written in Java under Apache-2.0; Gatus is written in Go under Apache-2.0. zipkin has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, Gatus 7%. Gatus 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
| zipkin | Gatus | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 12K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-08-06 | 2026-09-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 828 |
| 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 Gatus if
- You want the Gatus 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 Gatus 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 Gatus
Gatus is an open source health dashboard and status page for monitoring services in real time. It is written in Go, licensed under Apache 2.0, and appears in the Infrastructure & Operations / Monitoring & Observability category. The project presents a developer oriented interface for checking whether services are reachable and behaving as expected.
read the full Gatus overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is zipkin or Gatus more popular?
zipkin has 17,461 GitHub stars and Gatus has 12,095. zipkin has the larger community by that measure.
Are zipkin and Gatus free?
Both are open source. zipkin is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Gatus under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between zipkin and Gatus?
zipkin is written in Java and Gatus 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, zipkin or Gatus?
Choose zipkin if you want the larger community (17,461 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Gatus if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.