head to head · open source
zipkin vs gf
zipkin has 17,461 GitHub stars, 3,098 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. gf has 13,272 stars, 1,719 forks, 148 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zipkin leads on adoption by 32% (17,461 vs 13,272 stars). zipkin is written in Java under Apache-2.0; gf is written in Go under MIT. zipkin has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, gf 13%. gf was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | gf | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 13K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-08-06 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 1.7K |
| 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 gf if
- You want the gf feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and gf 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 gf
GoFrame is an MIT licensed, production ready application framework for the Go programming language that provides a full stack toolkit — HTTP server, ORM, logging, tracing, and command line scaffolding — in a single dependency, aimed at Go teams that want one coherent framework instead of assembling many separate libraries.
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Frequently asked questions
Is zipkin or gf more popular?
zipkin has 17,461 GitHub stars and gf has 13,272. zipkin has the larger community by that measure.
Are zipkin and gf free?
Both are open source. zipkin is licensed under Apache-2.0 and gf under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between zipkin and gf?
zipkin is written in Java and gf 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 gf?
Choose zipkin if you want the larger community (17,461 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose gf if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.