head to head · open source
zipkin vs tapir
zipkin has 17,464 GitHub stars, 3,098 forks, 175 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. tapir has 1,474 stars, 468 forks, 173 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. zipkin leads on adoption by 1,085% (17,464 vs 1,474 stars). zipkin is written in Java under Apache-2.0; tapir is written in Scala under Apache-2.0. zipkin has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, tapir 32%. tapir 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 | tapir | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Scala |
| Last push | 2026-08-06 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 468 |
| 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 tapir if
- You want the tapir feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Scala
- You evaluated both and tapir 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 tapir
Tapir is a Scala library that lets developers describe an HTTP API once in a type safe, declarative form and then expose that description as a server, consume it as a client, and generate OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, and JSON Schema documentation from it, and it is aimed at Scala teams building HTTP services that want their API documentation to stay in step with their code.
read the full tapir overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is zipkin or tapir more popular?
zipkin has 17,464 GitHub stars and tapir has 1,474. zipkin has the larger community by that measure.
Are zipkin and tapir free?
Both are open source. zipkin is licensed under Apache-2.0 and tapir under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between zipkin and tapir?
zipkin is written in Java and tapir in Scala. 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 tapir?
Choose zipkin if you want the larger community (17,464 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose tapir if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.