head to head · open source
zipkin vs parca
zipkin has 17,475 GitHub stars, 3,092 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. parca has 5,006 stars, 271 forks, 206 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zipkin leads on adoption by 249% (17,475 vs 5,006 stars). zipkin is written in Java under Apache-2.0; parca is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. zipkin has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, parca 5%. parca 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 | parca | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 5.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-08-06 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 271 |
| 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 parca if
- You want the parca feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and parca 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 parca
Continuous profiling for analysis of CPU, memory usage over time, and down to the line number. Saving infrastructure cost, improving performance, and increasing reliability. Features eBPF Profiler : A single profiler, using eBPF, automatically discovering targets from Kubernetes or systemd across the entire infrastructure with very low overhead. Supports C, C++, Rust, Go, and more! Open Standards : Both producing pprof formatted profiles with the eBPF based profiler, and ingesting any pprof formatted profiles allowing for wide language adoption and interoperability with existing tooling. Optimized Storage &…
read the full parca overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is zipkin or parca more popular?
zipkin has 17,475 GitHub stars and parca has 5,006. zipkin has the larger community by that measure.
Are zipkin and parca free?
Both are open source. zipkin is licensed under Apache-2.0 and parca under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between zipkin and parca?
zipkin is written in Java and parca in TypeScript. 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 parca?
Choose zipkin if you want the larger community (17,475 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose parca if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.