head to head · open source
zipkin vs minitrace-rust
zipkin has 17,465 GitHub stars, 3,100 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. minitrace-rust has 751 stars, 46 forks, 13 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. zipkin leads on adoption by 2,226% (17,465 vs 751 stars). zipkin is written in Java under Apache-2.0; minitrace-rust is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. zipkin has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, minitrace-rust 6%. minitrace-rust 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 | minitrace-rust | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 751 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-08-06 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 46 |
| 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 minitrace-rust if
- You want the minitrace-rust feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and minitrace-rust 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 minitrace-rust
minitrace rust is an extremely fast tracing library for the Rust programming language, intended for Rust developers who need distributed tracing in their services and want that trace data to reach backends such as Jaeger or Datadog.
read the full minitrace-rust overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is zipkin or minitrace-rust more popular?
zipkin has 17,465 GitHub stars and minitrace-rust has 751. zipkin has the larger community by that measure.
Are zipkin and minitrace-rust free?
Both are open source. zipkin is licensed under Apache-2.0 and minitrace-rust under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between zipkin and minitrace-rust?
zipkin is written in Java and minitrace-rust in Rust. 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 minitrace-rust?
Choose zipkin if you want the larger community (17,465 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose minitrace-rust if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.