head to head · open source
zipkin vs pinpoint
zipkin has 17,476 GitHub stars, 3,092 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. pinpoint has 13,871 stars, 3,736 forks, 543 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zipkin leads on adoption by 26% (17,476 vs 13,871 stars). zipkin is written in Java under Apache-2.0; pinpoint is written in Java under Apache-2.0. zipkin has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, pinpoint 27%. pinpoint was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (distributed-tracing, 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 | pinpoint | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 14K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Java |
| Last push | 2026-08-06 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 3.7K |
| 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 pinpoint if
- You want the pinpoint feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and pinpoint 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 pinpoint
Latest Release (2026/05/21) We're happy to announce the release of Pinpoint v3.1.0. Please check the release note at ( The current stable version is v3.1.0. Live Demo Take a quick look at Pinpoint with our demo! PHP, PYTHON Pinpoint also supports application written in PHP, Python. Check out our agent repository. About Pinpoint Pinpoint is an APM (Application Performance Management) tool for large scale distributed systems written in Java / PHP/PYTHON). Inspired by Dapper, Pinpoint provides a solution to help analyze the overall structure of the system and how components within them are interconnected by tracing…
read the full pinpoint overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is zipkin or pinpoint more popular?
zipkin has 17,476 GitHub stars and pinpoint has 13,871. zipkin has the larger community by that measure.
Are zipkin and pinpoint free?
Both are open source. zipkin is licensed under Apache-2.0 and pinpoint under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between zipkin and pinpoint?
zipkin is written in Java and pinpoint in Java. 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 pinpoint?
Choose zipkin if you want the larger community (17,476 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose pinpoint if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.