head to head · open source
SigNoz vs zipkin
SigNoz has 32,509 GitHub stars, 2,573 forks, 1,557 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zipkin has 17,476 stars, 3,092 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. SigNoz leads on adoption by 86% (32,509 vs 17,476 stars). SigNoz is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; zipkin is written in Java under Apache-2.0. SigNoz has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, zipkin 18%. SigNoz 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, 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
| SigNoz | zipkin | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 17K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-08-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 3.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick SigNoz if
- You weight community size — 33K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick zipkin if
- You want the zipkin 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 zipkin fits your workflow better
About SigNoz
中文 · Deutsch · Português SigNoz is an open source observability platform built on OpenTelemetry. We’re building an enterprise grade alternative to fragmented monitoring stacks, with logs, metrics, traces, alerts, and dashboards in one place. Choose how to run SigNoz SigNoz Cloud (Recommended) Fully managed SigNoz with a 30 day free trial, no credit card required, usage based pricing that starts at $49, and regional data hosting. Start free → Enterprise Enterprise Cloud, BYOC, or Enterprise Self Hosted with compliance, support, custom retention, RBAC, ingestion controls, data residency, and region selection…
read the full SigNoz overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is SigNoz or zipkin more popular?
SigNoz has 32,509 GitHub stars and zipkin has 17,476. SigNoz has the larger community by that measure.
Are SigNoz and zipkin free?
Both are open source. SigNoz has no licence declared in this registry, and zipkin is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between SigNoz and zipkin?
SigNoz is written in TypeScript and zipkin 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, SigNoz or zipkin?
Choose SigNoz if you want the larger community (32,509 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose zipkin if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.