# Apache SkyWalking vs Glowroot

| Attribute | Apache SkyWalking | Glowroot |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 52.9 (55% (medium)) | 50.1 (53% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 21 | 10 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 106 | 13 |
| adoption.github_stars | 24,968 | 1,358 |
| content.faq | `[{"answer":"An open-source observability platform combining distributed tracing, metrics, logs, and profiling in one interface. Provides automatic instrumentation across 10+ languages, interactive service topology visualization, database monitoring, and an AI assistant for answering observability questions in natural language. It is indexed under APM Tools.","source":"https://skywalking.apache.org/","question":"What is Apache SkyWalking?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Apache SkyWalking is open source, so it can be self-hosted and used at no licence cost. It is released under the Apache-2.0 licence. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://skywalking.apache.org/","question":"Is Apache SkyWalking free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Apache SkyWalking supports the web and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://skywalking.apache.org/","question":"What platforms does Apache SkyWalking support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Apache SkyWalking can be deployed cloud / SaaS and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://skywalking.apache.org/","question":"Can Apache SkyWalking be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 14 integrations for Apache SkyWalking, including Apache APISIX, Grafana, OpenTelemetry Collector, Amazon Bedrock, OpenAI, WeChat Mini Program, Alipay Mini Program and Kafka, plus 6 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://skywalking.apache.org/","question":"What does Apache SkyWalking integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Apache SkyWalking is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, a permissive licence that generally allows commercial use and modification. Licence terms can change between releases, so verify against the repository for the version you intend to use.","source":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking","question":"Is Apache SkyWalking open source?","confidence":0.95}]` | `[{"answer":"Glowroot is a Java application performance monitoring (APM) tool that captures request traces, provides continuous profiling, response time analysis, and database monitoring with extensive library and framework instrumentation. It is indexed under APM Tools.","source":"https://glowroot.org","question":"What is Glowroot?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Glowroot is open source, so it can be self-hosted and used at no licence cost. It is released under the Apache-2.0 licence. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://glowroot.org","question":"Is Glowroot free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed browser-based access to Glowroot. That is the extent of what we could verify from public sources, so it may well offer desktop or mobile clients we have not indexed.","source":"https://glowroot.org","question":"What platforms does Glowroot support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Glowroot can be deployed self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://glowroot.org","question":"Can Glowroot be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 39 integrations for Glowroot, including Apache Camel, Cassandra, EJB, Elasticsearch, Grails, Hibernate, Apache HttpClient and Apache HttpAsyncClient, plus 31 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://glowroot.org","question":"What does Glowroot integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Glowroot is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, a permissive licence that generally allows commercial use and modification. Licence terms can change between releases, so verify against the repository for the version you intend to use.","source":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot","question":"Is Glowroot open source?","confidence":0.95}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | An open-source system for monitoring and analyzing distributed applications with comprehensive tracing, service topology visualization, and multi-signal observability for microservices and AI workloads. | A lightweight APM solution for Java applications that helps identify performance bottlenecks and understand application behavior with low overhead and straightforward deployment options. |
| features.capabilities | `{"rum":true,"hosting":"both","languages":"10+ language agents supported","service_map":true,"otel_support":"ingest","db_monitoring":true,"code_profiling":true,"error_analytics":true,"anomaly_detection":true,"distributed_tracing":true,"auto_instrumentation":true}` | `{"hosting":"self","languages":"Java","otel_support":"none","db_monitoring":true,"code_profiling":true,"error_analytics":true,"distributed_tracing":true,"auto_instrumentation":true}` |
| integrations.count | 18 | 50 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Apache APISIX"},{"name":"Grafana"},{"name":"OpenTelemetry Collector"},{"name":"Amazon Bedrock"},{"name":"OpenAI"},{"name":"WeChat Mini Program"},{"name":"Alipay Mini Program"},{"name":"Kafka"},{"name":"MySQL"},{"name":"PostgreSQL"},{"name":"Redis"},{"name":"Envoy"},{"name":"DeepSeek"},{"name":"Claude Sonnet"},{"name":"Zipkin","direction":"inbound"},{"name":"OpenTelemetry","direction":"inbound"},{"name":"Prometheus","direction":"inbound"},{"name":"Zabbix","direction":"inbound"},{"name":"Fluentd","direction":"inbound"},{"name":"Flink","native":true},{"name":"Kong","native":true},{"name":"Apache RocketMQ","native":true},{"name":"Apache ActiveMQ","native":true},{"name":"Pulsar","native":true},{"name":"ClickHouse","native":true},{"name":"MongoDB","native":true},{"name":"Nginx","native":true},{"name":"Kubernetes","native":true},{"name":"Cilium","native":true},{"name":"BookKeeper","native":true},{"name":"ChatGPT","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Telegraf","native":true,"category":"metrics"},{"name":"Apache Pulsar","native":true,"category":"message_queue"}]` | `[{"name":"Apache Camel"},{"name":"Cassandra"},{"name":"EJB"},{"name":"Elasticsearch"},{"name":"Grails"},{"name":"Hibernate"},{"name":"Apache HttpClient"},{"name":"Apache HttpAsyncClient"},{"name":"AsyncHttpClient"},{"name":"OkHttp"},{"name":"JavaMail"},{"name":"JAX-RS"},{"name":"JAX-WS"},{"name":"JDBC"},{"name":"JMS"},{"name":"JSF"},{"name":"JSP"},{"name":"Kafka"},{"name":"JUL"},{"name":"Log4j"},{"name":"Logback"},{"name":"MongoDB"},{"name":"Netty"},{"name":"Play Framework"},{"name":"Quartz Scheduler"},{"name":"Redis"},{"name":"Servlets"},{"name":"Spring Framework"},{"name":"Struts"},{"name":"Vert.x"},{"name":"Tomcat"},{"name":"TomEE"},{"name":"Wildfly"},{"name":"JBoss EAP"},{"name":"Jetty"},{"name":"Glassfish"},{"name":"Payara"},{"name":"WebLogic"},{"name":"WebSphere"}]` |
| language.primary | Java | Java |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"web":true,"linux":true}` | `{"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"open_source","sourceUrl":"https://skywalking.apache.org/","retrievedAt":"2026-10-14T22:35:59.641Z"}` | `{"type":"open_source","summary":"Open source, free","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://glowroot.org","retrievedAt":"2026-10-14T22:34:54.547Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | open_source | open_source |
| pricing.price_level | free | free |
| pricing.transparent | yes | yes |
| release.cadence_days | 93 | 27 |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v11.0.0","date":"2026-08-28T02:40:59Z","type":"stable","version":"v11.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v10.4.0","date":"2026-04-01T12:51:05Z","type":"stable","version":"v10.4.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v10.3.0","date":"2025-11-10T11:40:02Z","type":"stable","version":"v10.3.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v10.2.0","date":"2025-03-24T11:52:09Z","type":"stable","version":"v10.2.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v10.1.0","date":"2024-09-29T13:30:12Z","type":"stable","version":"v10.1.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v10.0.1","date":"2024-05-30T03:42:06Z","type":"stable","version":"v10.0.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v10.0.0","date":"2024-05-13T01:02:53Z","type":"stable","version":"v10.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.7.0","date":"2023-12-01T18:19:39Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.7.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.6.0","date":"2023-09-03T14:33:23Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.6.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.5.0","date":"2023-06-18T16:20:59Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.5.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.4.0","date":"2023-03-09T04:01:37Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.4.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.3.0","date":"2022-12-04T03:44:41Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.3.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.2.0","date":"2022-09-01T12:54:27Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.2.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.1.0","date":"2022-06-10T03:01:22Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.1.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.0.0","date":"2022-04-09T12:13:55Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v8.9.1","date":"2021-12-11T13:57:42Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.9.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v8.9.0","date":"2021-12-05T07:33:26Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.9.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v8.8.1","date":"2021-10-02T16:39:31Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.8.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v8.8.0","date":"2021-09-27T09:58:25Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.8.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v8.7.0","date":"2021-08-02T12:25:39Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.7.0"}]` | `[{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.8-beta.5","date":"2026-09-08T17:57:35Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.8-beta.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.8-beta.4","date":"2026-08-02T14:53:48Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.8-beta.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.8-beta.3","date":"2026-06-08T12:18:19Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.8-beta.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.8-beta.1","date":"2026-06-08T05:43:46Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.8-beta.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.7","date":"2026-05-11T08:58:46Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.14.7"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.7-beta.1","date":"2026-04-21T14:29:03Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.7-beta.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.6","date":"2026-03-24T11:20:48Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.14.6"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.6-beta.4","date":"2026-03-21T20:01:14Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.6-beta.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.6-beta.3","date":"2026-03-15T20:50:22Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.6-beta.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.6-beta.2","date":"2026-03-14T16:45:03Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.6-beta.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.5","date":"2026-03-08T16:38:11Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.14.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.5-beta.4","date":"2026-03-02T08:06:11Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.5-beta.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.5-beta.3","date":"2026-02-18T10:56:36Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.5-beta.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.5-beta.2","date":"2025-11-10T09:13:23Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.5-beta.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.5-beta.1","date":"2025-07-18T14:32:30Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.5-beta.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.4","date":"2025-05-25T16:31:13Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.14.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.3-beta.5","date":"2024-09-05T19:57:21Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.3-beta.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.3-beta.4","date":"2024-07-11T20:13:52Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.3-beta.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.2","date":"2024-04-07T14:22:23Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.14.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.2-beta.5","date":"2024-04-03T14:44:24Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.2-beta.5"}]` |
| reliability.status_page | - | yes |
| security.scorecard | 7 | 5.2 |
| security.vulnerabilities | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=maven&package_name=org.apache.skywalking%3Azipkin-receiver-plugin&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=maven&package_name=org.glowroot%3Aglowroot-agent-api&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` |

## Capabilities (APM Tools)

| Capability | Apache SkyWalking | Glowroot |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Instrumentation** |  |  |
| Auto-instrumentation | ✓ | ✓ |
| Distributed tracing | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Insight** |  |  |
| Service map | ✓ | - |
| Code / continuous profiling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Database monitoring | ✓ | ✓ |
| Error analytics | ✓ | ✓ |
| Real-user monitoring | ✓ | - |
| SLO / error-budget tracking | - | - |
| **Intelligence** |  |  |
| Anomaly / root-cause AI | ✓ | - |
| **Standards** |  |  |
| OpenTelemetry support | OTLP ingest | None |
| **Core** |  |  |
| Language agents | 10+ language agents supported | Java |
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Hosting | Cloud + self-hosted | Self-hosted only |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T19:15:26.107Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*