head to head · open source
zipkin vs GoModel
zipkin has 17,464 GitHub stars, 3,098 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. GoModel has 1,171 stars, 101 forks, 80 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zipkin leads on adoption by 1,391% (17,464 vs 1,171 stars). zipkin is written in Java under Apache-2.0; GoModel is written in Go under MIT. zipkin has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, GoModel 9%. GoModel 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.
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Side by side
| zipkin | GoModel | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-08-06 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 101 |
| 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 GoModel if
- You want the GoModel feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and GoModel 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 GoModel
GoModel is an MIT licensed AI gateway, control plane and proxy written in Go that exposes one OpenAI compatible endpoint at /v1 and one Anthropic compatible endpoint at /v1/messages in front of OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Groq, xAI, Ollama, vLLM and many other providers, for teams that run their own LLM traffic and want routing, caching, spend control and observability in a single self hosted service.
read the full GoModel overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is zipkin or GoModel more popular?
zipkin has 17,464 GitHub stars and GoModel has 1,171. zipkin has the larger community by that measure.
Are zipkin and GoModel free?
Both are open source. zipkin is licensed under Apache-2.0 and GoModel under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between zipkin and GoModel?
zipkin is written in Java and GoModel 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 GoModel?
Choose zipkin if you want the larger community (17,464 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose GoModel if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.