head to head · open source
zipkin vs Keep
zipkin has 17,461 GitHub stars, 3,098 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. Keep has 12,331 stars, 1,508 forks, 609 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. zipkin leads on adoption by 42% (17,461 vs 12,331 stars). zipkin is written in Java under Apache-2.0; Keep is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence. zipkin has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, Keep 12%. Keep 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 | Keep | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 12K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Java | Python |
| Last push | 2026-08-06 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| 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 Keep if
- You want the Keep feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and Keep 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 Keep
Keep is the open source AIOps and alert management platform: a Python based single pane of glass that unifies alerts and incidents, deduplicates and enriches them, and automates response through declarative YAML workflows, aimed at the SRE, platform and on call teams that operate many monitoring tools at once.
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Frequently asked questions
Is zipkin or Keep more popular?
zipkin has 17,461 GitHub stars and Keep has 12,331. zipkin has the larger community by that measure.
Are zipkin and Keep free?
Both are open source. zipkin is licensed under Apache-2.0, and Keep has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between zipkin and Keep?
zipkin is written in Java and Keep in Python. 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 Keep?
Choose zipkin if you want the larger community (17,461 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Keep if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.