head to head · open source
zipkin vs magic-trace
zipkin has 17,464 GitHub stars, 3,098 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. magic-trace has 6,273 stars, 209 forks, 70 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. zipkin leads on adoption by 178% (17,464 vs 6,273 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 3%. 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 | 2026-08-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 209 |
| 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 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 magic-trace
magic trace is an open source tracing tool, written in OCaml and released under the MIT license, that collects and displays high resolution traces of what a process is doing. It lives in the Linux performance tooling ecosystem and sits alongside perf , which it uses under the hood to drive Intel Processor Trace. Rather than sampling call stacks throughout time, magic trace snapshots a ring buffer of all control flow leading up to a chosen point in time, then renders an interactive timeline of call stacks going back a configurable span of roughly 10ms, at approximately 40ns resolution.
read the full magic-trace overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is zipkin or magic-trace more popular?
zipkin has 17,464 GitHub stars and magic-trace has 6,273. 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 (17,464 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.