head to head · open source
zipkin vs langsmith-sdk
zipkin has 17,464 GitHub stars, 3,098 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. langsmith-sdk has 1,060 stars, 298 forks, 216 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zipkin leads on adoption by 1,548% (17,464 vs 1,060 stars). zipkin is written in Java under Apache-2.0; langsmith-sdk is written in Python under MIT. zipkin has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, langsmith-sdk 28%. langsmith-sdk 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 | langsmith-sdk | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Python |
| Last push | 2026-08-06 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 298 |
| 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 langsmith-sdk if
- You want the langsmith-sdk feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and langsmith-sdk 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 langsmith-sdk
LangSmith SDK is the official pair of Python and JavaScript client libraries for the LangSmith platform, built and maintained by LangChain for teams that need to debug, evaluate, and monitor language models and intelligent agents.
read the full langsmith-sdk overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is zipkin or langsmith-sdk more popular?
zipkin has 17,464 GitHub stars and langsmith-sdk has 1,060. zipkin has the larger community by that measure.
Are zipkin and langsmith-sdk free?
Both are open source. zipkin is licensed under Apache-2.0 and langsmith-sdk under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between zipkin and langsmith-sdk?
zipkin is written in Java and langsmith-sdk 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 langsmith-sdk?
Choose zipkin if you want the larger community (17,464 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose langsmith-sdk if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.