head to head · open source
zipkin vs kiali
zipkin has 17,464 GitHub stars, 3,098 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. kiali has 3,637 stars, 570 forks, 79 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. zipkin leads on adoption by 380% (17,464 vs 3,637 stars). zipkin is written in Java under Apache-2.0; kiali is written in Go under Apache-2.0. zipkin has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, kiali 16%. kiali 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 | kiali | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 3.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-08-06 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 570 |
| 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 kiali if
- You want the kiali 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 kiali 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 kiali
Kiali is a management console and observability interface for Istio service meshes, aimed at developers who work on the project and at operators who run Istio on Kubernetes and OpenShift clusters.
read the full kiali overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is zipkin or kiali more popular?
zipkin has 17,464 GitHub stars and kiali has 3,637. zipkin has the larger community by that measure.
Are zipkin and kiali free?
Both are open source. zipkin is licensed under Apache-2.0 and kiali under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between zipkin and kiali?
zipkin is written in Java and kiali 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 kiali?
Choose zipkin if you want the larger community (17,464 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose kiali if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.