head to head · open source
zipkin vs retina
zipkin has 17,475 GitHub stars, 3,092 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. retina has 3,185 stars, 308 forks, 190 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. zipkin leads on adoption by 449% (17,475 vs 3,185 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.
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Side by side
| zipkin | retina | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 3.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-08-06 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 308 |
| 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 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 retina
[![goreport][goreport img]][goreport] ![GitHub release][release img] [![retina publish][godoc badge]][godoc] ![license] [![retina test][retina test image badge]][retina test image] [![retinash][retinash badge]][retinash] [![retina publish][retina publish badge]][retina publish] ![retina codeql img][retina codeql badge] ![retina golangci lint img][retina golangci lint badge] Overview Retina is a cloud agnostic, open source Kubernetes network observability platform that provides a centralized hub for monitoring application health, network health, and security . It provides actionable insights to cluster network…
read the full retina overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is zipkin or retina more popular?
zipkin has 17,475 GitHub stars and retina has 3,185. 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 (17,475 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose retina if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.