Uptrace vs Zipkin
On the evidence we track, Uptrace leads this comparison with a composite score of 57/100. Scores are only directly comparable because these tools share a category; the full breakdown and every source is below.
Capabilities
Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for distributed tracing tools. “-” means undocumented, not absent.
What each one is
The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.
Uptrace
LeaderAn observability solution that brings together application traces, metrics, and log records into one place. Powered by OpenTelemetry and ClickHouse, it's offered both as a cloud service and for self-hosting, designed to process and analyze large volumes of telemetry at substantially lower cost than competing platforms.
Zipkin
Zipkin captures detailed request tracking data from distributed systems, stores it using various backends, and provides a UI for searching traces by service, operation, and duration, along with visualization of service dependency diagrams.
Pricing
List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.
Uptrace
LeaderFrom $0.075/GB spans/logs, $0.025 per 1M datapoints metrics. 50 GB free/month, automatic discounts at scale.
- Usage-based$0.075/GB spans/logs (from $0.10/GB, down to $0.016/GB at scale), $0.025 per 1M datapoints for metrics. 50 GB free/month.
- Unlimited users, services, and hosts
- OpenTelemetry native
- Trace, metrics, and log ingestion
- High-cardinality attributes
- Automatic volume discounts (down to $0.016/GB)
- +2 more
Platform & deployment
Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.
Integrations
What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.
Uptrace
Leader- OpenTelemetry
- Prometheus
- Vector
- FluentBit
- CloudWatch
- Grafana
- GitHub Actions
- Slack
- PagerDuty
- AlertManager
- WebHook
- Google Cloud Auth
- Okta
- Keycloak
- Google Cloud
- Terraform
- Tempo
Zipkin
- HTTP
- Kafka
- Apache ActiveMQ
- gRPC
- RabbitMQ
- Apache Pulsar
- Elasticsearch
- Apache Cassandra
- OpenSearch
- Brave
- Apache Kafka
Uptrace or Zipkin: which one depends on you
A composite score cannot know your constraints. Describe them and both get re-weighted against what you actually need, with the evidence behind every position.
Free to run, no account needed to start. How the evaluation works
Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.