head to head · open source
zipkin vs pinpoint
zipkin has 17,461 GitHub stars, 3,098 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. pinpoint has 13,872 stars, 3,749 forks, 543 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zipkin leads on adoption by 26% (17,461 vs 13,872 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 | 2026-09-17 |
| 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 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 pinpoint
Pinpoint is an open source Application Performance Management (APM) tool built for large scale distributed systems. It is written primarily in Java and also supports applications written in PHP and Python through a separate agent repository. Inspired by Google's Dapper, it provides a way to analyze the overall structure of a system and how the components inside it are interconnected by tracing transactions across distributed applications. The project lives in the Java ecosystem, is licensed under Apache 2.0, and has been developed for around twelve years, with its current stable release being v3.1.0.…
read the full pinpoint overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is zipkin or pinpoint more popular?
zipkin has 17,461 GitHub stars and pinpoint has 13,872. 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 (17,461 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.