# Apache SkyWalking vs Parca

**Leader by vioscaleAI score:** Apache SkyWalking

| Attribute | Apache SkyWalking | Parca |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 52.9 (55% (medium)) | 40.4 (53% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 21 | 11 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 106 | 40 |
| adoption.github_stars | 24,968 | 4,994 |
| 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":"Open source continuous profiling platform for analyzing CPU, memory, and IO usage down to the line number across entire infrastructure using eBPF. It is indexed under APM Tools.","source":"https://www.parca.dev","question":"What is Parca?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Parca 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://www.parca.dev","question":"Is Parca free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Parca supports the web, Linux and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://www.parca.dev","question":"What platforms does Parca support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Parca can be deployed self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://www.parca.dev","question":"Can Parca be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Parca 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/parca-dev/parca","question":"Is Parca 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. | Infrastructure-wide continuous profiling that analyzes CPU and memory consumption down to individual functions, requiring zero instrumentation and operating with minimal overhead. |
| 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":"C, C++, Rust, Go, and more","otel_support":"none","code_profiling":true,"auto_instrumentation":true}` |
| integrations.count | 18 | 1 |
| 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":"Kubernetes"}]` |
| language.primary | Java | TypeScript |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"web":true,"linux":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true,"linux":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"open_source","sourceUrl":"https://skywalking.apache.org/","retrievedAt":"2026-10-14T22:35:59.641Z"}` | `{"type":"open_source","sourceUrl":"https://www.parca.dev","retrievedAt":"2026-08-13T20:43:59.814Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | open_source | open_source |
| pricing.price_level | free | free |
| pricing.transparent | yes | yes |
| release.cadence_days | 93 | 75 |
| 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/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.29.1","date":"2026-09-28T13:53:27Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.29.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.29.0","date":"2026-09-23T17:30:55Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.29.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.28.0","date":"2026-05-07T08:08:08Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.28.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.27.1","date":"2026-03-20T15:57:15Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.27.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.27.0","date":"2026-03-20T13:36:53Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.27.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.26.0","date":"2026-02-27T12:35:51Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.26.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.25.0","date":"2025-11-25T09:01:05Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.25.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.24.2","date":"2025-09-10T16:49:35Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.24.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.24.1","date":"2025-09-09T16:19:35Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.24.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.24.0","date":"2025-06-20T07:47:59Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.24.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.23.1","date":"2025-02-24T14:24:39Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.23.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.23.0","date":"2025-02-20T16:17:30Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.23.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.22.0","date":"2024-08-09T12:24:32Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.22.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.21.0","date":"2024-02-27T16:50:39Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.21.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.20.0","date":"2023-10-20T11:23:27Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.20.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.19.0","date":"2023-09-21T14:57:53Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.19.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.18.0","date":"2023-06-14T16:36:22Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.18.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.17.0","date":"2023-03-29T08:58:40Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.17.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.16.2","date":"2023-03-07T04:13:18Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.16.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.16.1","date":"2023-03-02T13:21:15Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.16.1"}]` |
| security.scorecard | 7 | 5.5 |
| 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=go&package_name=github.com%2Fparca-dev%2Fparca&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` |

## Capabilities (APM Tools)

| Capability | Apache SkyWalking | Parca |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **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 | C, C++, Rust, Go, and more |
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Hosting | Cloud + self-hosted | Self-hosted only |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T20:06:05.726Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*