head to head · open source
zipkin vs magic-trace
zipkin has 17,475 GitHub stars, 3,092 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. magic-trace has 6,346 stars, 223 forks, 70 open issues and last shipped 17 days ago. zipkin leads on adoption by 175% (17,475 vs 6,346 stars). zipkin is written in Java under Apache-2.0; magic-trace is written in OCaml under MIT. zipkin has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, magic-trace 4%. magic-trace 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 | magic-trace | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 6.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | OCaml |
| Last push | 2026-08-06 | 2026-10-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 223 |
| 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 magic-trace if
- You want the magic-trace feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches OCaml
- You evaluated both and magic-trace fits your workflow better
About zipkin
zipkin Zipkin is a distributed tracing system. It helps gather timing data needed to troubleshoot latency problems in service architectures. Features include both the collection and lookup of this data. If you have a trace ID in a log file, you can jump directly to it. Otherwise, you can query based on attributes such as service, operation name, tags and duration. Some interesting data will be summarized for you, such as the percentage of time spent in a service, and whether operations failed. The Zipkin UI also presents a dependency diagram showing how many traced requests went through each application. This…
read the full zipkin overview →
About magic-trace
magic trace Overview magic trace collects and displays high resolution traces of what a process is doing. People have used it to: figure out why an application running in production handles some requests slowly while simultaneously handling a sea of uninteresting requests, look at what their code is actually doing instead of what they think it's doing, get a history of what their application was doing before it crashed, instead of a mere stacktrace at that final instant, ...and much more! magic trace: has 2% 10% overhead, doesn't require application changes to use, traces every function call with 40ns…
read the full magic-trace overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is zipkin or magic-trace more popular?
zipkin has 17,475 GitHub stars and magic-trace has 6,346. zipkin has the larger community by that measure.
Are zipkin and magic-trace free?
Both are open source. zipkin is licensed under Apache-2.0 and magic-trace under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between zipkin and magic-trace?
zipkin is written in Java and magic-trace in OCaml. 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 magic-trace?
Choose zipkin if you want the larger community (17,475 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose magic-trace if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.