head to head · open source
zipkin vs retina
zipkin has 17,464 GitHub stars, 3,098 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. retina has 3,173 stars, 304 forks, 190 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. zipkin leads on adoption by 450% (17,464 vs 3,173 stars). zipkin is written in Java under Apache-2.0; retina is written in Go under MIT. zipkin has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, retina 10%. retina 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| zipkin | retina | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 3.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-08-06 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 304 |
| 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 retina if
- You want the retina feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and retina 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 retina
Retina is a cloud agnostic, open source, eBPF based network observability platform for Kubernetes, built for cluster network administrators, cluster security administrators, and DevOps engineers who need a centralized hub for monitoring application health, network health, and security.
read the full retina overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Monitoring & Observability projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Monitoring & Observability field.
Frequently asked questions
Is zipkin or retina more popular?
zipkin has 17,464 GitHub stars and retina has 3,173. zipkin has the larger community by that measure.
Are zipkin and retina free?
Both are open source. zipkin is licensed under Apache-2.0 and retina under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between zipkin and retina?
zipkin is written in Java and retina in Go. 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 retina?
Choose zipkin if you want the larger community (17,464 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose retina if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.