# Uptrace vs Zipkin

**Leader by Vioscale score:** Uptrace

| Attribute | Uptrace | Zipkin |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 62.7 (63% (medium)) | 43 (38% (low)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | - | 0 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 0 | 1,426 |
| adoption.github_stars | 4,270 | 17,453 |
| adoption.package_downloads_weekly | 3,588 | - |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"on_prem":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"on_prem":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | Full-featured observability backend built on OpenTelemetry standards and ClickHouse. Provides distributed tracing, metrics, and log management with dramatically lower costs than competing platforms through pay-per-gigabyte billing rather than enterprise licensing models. | Collects timing and dependency data from instrumented applications to troubleshoot latency issues. Provides a web interface for querying traces by service, operation, tags, or duration, and displays how requests flow through the service architecture. |
| features.capabilities | `{"hosting":"both","trace_role":"platform","service_map":true,"otel_support":"native","trace_search":true,"multi_protocol":true,"storage_backend":"ClickHouse with PostgreSQL for metadata","high_cardinality":true,"metrics_correlation":true,"auto_instrumentation":"none"}` | `{"hosting":"self","trace_role":"backend","service_map":true,"trace_search":true,"multi_protocol":true,"storage_backend":"In-memory, Apache Cassandra, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch","auto_instrumentation":"agent"}` |
| integrations.count | 14 | 10 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"OpenTelemetry"},{"name":"Prometheus"},{"name":"Vector"},{"name":"FluentBit"},{"name":"CloudWatch"},{"name":"Grafana"},{"name":"GitHub Actions"},{"name":"Slack"},{"name":"PagerDuty"},{"name":"AlertManager"},{"name":"WebHook"},{"name":"Google Cloud Auth"},{"name":"Okta"},{"name":"Keycloak"}]` | `[{"name":"HTTP"},{"name":"Kafka"},{"name":"Apache ActiveMQ"},{"name":"gRPC"},{"name":"RabbitMQ"},{"name":"Apache Pulsar"},{"name":"Elasticsearch"},{"name":"Apache Cassandra"},{"name":"OpenSearch"},{"name":"Brave"}]` |
| language.primary | Go | Java |
| license.spdx | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| market.availability | `{"primaryMarkets":["US"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | - |
| platform.support | `{"web":true}` | `{"mac":true,"web":true,"linux":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"hybrid","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Free","summary":"Free, always","features":["Full platform access","50+ pre-built dashboards","Service graph","Alerts and notifications","Unlimited users, services, and hosts"],"components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":0,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"50 GB of traces and logs per month","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"traces_and_logs":"50 GB/month"}},{"free":false,"name":"Pay-as-you-go","summary":"Traces/logs: $0.10/GB (scales to $0.016/GB). Metrics: $0.025/M datapoints. Hard spending cap available.","features":["Distributed tracing","Metrics monitoring","Log aggregation","Custom dashboards","PromQL queries","Slack/PagerDuty alerts"],"commitment":"monthly","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"GB"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.1,"currency":"USD"},{"per":{"qty":1000000,"unit":"datapoint"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.025,"currency":"USD"}],"description":"Charged at month-end or when hitting $400 spend, whichever comes first","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"On-Premises","summary":"License pricing. Contact sales.","features":["Full feature parity with cloud","No feature limits","Custom retention policies","Dedicated support engineer","SOC 2 certification available","Data remains on your infrastructure"],"description":"Self-hosted licensed deployment","contactSales":true}],"addOns":[{"name":"Cold storage (beyond 4 weeks)","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"GB-month"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.01,"currency":"USD"},{"per":{"qty":1000,"unit":"timeseries-month"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.2,"currency":"USD"}]},{"name":"Dropped/sampled data ingestion","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"GB"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.01,"currency":"USD"}]}],"summary":"Free tier includes 50 GB/month. Usage: $0.10/GB (scales to $0.016/GB), $0.025/M datapoints for metrics. Volume discounts automatic. No per-seat fees, unlimited users.","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://uptrace.dev/pricing","retrievedAt":"2026-08-14T16:39:12.234Z","startingPrice":{"amount":0.025,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},"billingPeriods":["month"]}` | `{"type":"open_source","sourceUrl":"https://zipkin.io","retrievedAt":"2026-08-14T15:27:18.245Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | freemium | open_source |
| pricing.price_level | low | free |
| pricing.transparent | yes | - |
| release.cadence_days | 11 | 15 |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/uptrace/uptrace/releases/tag/v2.1.0-beta.8","date":"2026-08-13T14:47:22Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.0-beta.8"},{"url":"https://github.com/uptrace/uptrace/releases/tag/v2.1.0-beta.7","date":"2026-06-05T11:50:55Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.0-beta.7"},{"url":"https://github.com/uptrace/uptrace/releases/tag/v2.1.0-beta.6","date":"2026-05-25T10:11:48Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.0-beta.6"},{"url":"https://github.com/uptrace/uptrace/releases/tag/v2.0.3","date":"2026-05-13T13:04:43Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.0.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/uptrace/uptrace/releases/tag/v2.1.0-beta.5","date":"2026-04-14T10:29:25Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.0-beta.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/uptrace/uptrace/releases/tag/v2.1.0-beta.4","date":"2026-03-13T12:37:23Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.0-beta.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/uptrace/uptrace/releases/tag/v2.1.0-beta.3","date":"2026-03-11T11:02:14Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.0-beta.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/uptrace/uptrace/releases/tag/v2.1.0-beta.2","date":"2026-03-09T09:58:42Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.0-beta.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/uptrace/uptrace/releases/tag/v2.1.0-beta","date":"2026-01-21T13:29:25Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.0-beta"},{"url":"https://github.com/uptrace/uptrace/releases/tag/v2.0.2","date":"2025-12-02T14:08:31Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.0.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/uptrace/uptrace/releases/tag/v2.0.1","date":"2025-08-11T11:16:49Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.0.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/uptrace/uptrace/releases/tag/v2.0.1-rc.1","date":"2025-08-11T09:28:34Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.0.1-rc.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/uptrace/uptrace/releases/tag/v2.0.0","date":"2025-07-24T07:09:56Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/uptrace/uptrace/releases/tag/v2.0.0-rc.4","date":"2025-07-24T06:29:51Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.0.0-rc.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/uptrace/uptrace/releases/tag/v2.0.0-rc.3","date":"2025-07-16T14:47:56Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.0.0-rc.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/uptrace/uptrace/releases/tag/v2.0.0-rc.2","date":"2025-07-16T13:45:04Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.0.0-rc.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/uptrace/uptrace/releases/tag/v1.7.7","date":"2025-07-02T09:04:15Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.7"},{"url":"https://github.com/uptrace/uptrace/releases/tag/v2.0.0-rc.1","date":"2025-07-07T13:39:37Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.0.0-rc.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/uptrace/uptrace/releases/tag/v2.0.0-beta.5","date":"2025-06-13T07:48:48Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.0.0-beta.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/uptrace/uptrace/releases/tag/v2.0.0-beta.4","date":"2025-06-04T12:59:20Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.0.0-beta.4"}]` | `[{"url":"https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/releases/tag/3.6.1","date":"2026-04-08T19:00:52Z","type":"stable","version":"3.6.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/releases/tag/3.6.0","date":"2026-03-23T21:13:45Z","type":"stable","version":"3.6.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/releases/tag/3.5.1","date":"2025-04-27T20:51:04Z","type":"stable","version":"3.5.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/releases/tag/3.5.0","date":"2025-02-16T18:23:14Z","type":"stable","version":"3.5.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/releases/tag/3.4.4","date":"2025-02-16T17:20:25Z","type":"stable","version":"3.4.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/releases/tag/3.4.3","date":"2025-01-06T22:48:34Z","type":"stable","version":"3.4.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/releases/tag/3.4.2","date":"2024-10-08T12:46:38Z","type":"stable","version":"3.4.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/releases/tag/3.4.1","date":"2024-08-04T06:44:30Z","type":"stable","version":"3.4.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/releases/tag/3.4.0","date":"2024-05-26T02:06:56Z","type":"stable","version":"3.4.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/releases/tag/3.3.1","date":"2024-05-25T11:57:58Z","type":"stable","version":"3.3.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/releases/tag/3.3.0","date":"2024-04-16T17:01:19Z","type":"stable","version":"3.3.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/releases/tag/3.2.1","date":"2024-04-13T18:22:45Z","type":"stable","version":"3.2.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/releases/tag/3.2.0","date":"2024-04-13T02:00:36Z","type":"stable","version":"3.2.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/releases/tag/3.1.1","date":"2024-03-07T07:02:48Z","type":"stable","version":"3.1.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/releases/tag/3.1.0","date":"2024-02-26T12:33:27Z","type":"stable","version":"3.1.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/releases/tag/3.0.6","date":"2024-02-09T02:47:27Z","type":"stable","version":"3.0.6"},{"url":"https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/releases/tag/3.0.5","date":"2024-01-25T02:23:59Z","type":"stable","version":"3.0.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/releases/tag/3.0.4","date":"2024-01-17T19:16:37Z","type":"stable","version":"3.0.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/releases/tag/3.0.3","date":"2024-01-15T00:55:42Z","type":"stable","version":"3.0.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/releases/tag/3.0.2","date":"2024-01-13T10:27:29Z","type":"stable","version":"3.0.2"}]` |
| reliability.sla_pct | 99.9 | - |
| reliability.status_page | yes | yes |
| security.gdpr | yes | - |
| security.scorecard | - | 4.2 |
| security.soc2 | yes | - |
| security.vulnerabilities | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=go&package_name=github.com%2Fuptrace%2Fuptrace%2Fexample%2Fkvrocks&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=maven&package_name=io.zipkin.java%3Azipkin-autoconfigure-ui&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` |

## Capabilities (Distributed Tracing Tools)

| Capability | Uptrace | Zipkin |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Core** |  |  |
| Trace role | SaaS platform | Trace backend / store |
| **Standards** |  |  |
| OpenTelemetry support | OTel-native | - |
| Multi-protocol (Jaeger + Zipkin + OTLP) | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Query** |  |  |
| Trace search / filter by attributes | ✓ | ✓ |
| Service dependency graph | ✓ | ✓ |
| High-cardinality attribute exploration | ✓ | - |
| **Sampling** |  |  |
| Tail-based / dynamic sampling | - | - |
| **Instrumentation** |  |  |
| Auto-instrumentation | None | Agent-based |
| **Correlation** |  |  |
| Correlate traces with metrics/logs | ✓ | - |
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Hosting | Cloud + self-hosted | Self-hosted only |
| **Architecture** |  |  |
| Storage backend | ClickHouse with PostgreSQL for metadata | In-memory, Apache Cassandra, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch |

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T17:06:40.601Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*