Grafana Beyla vs Jaeger
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Grafana Beyla | Jaeger |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 86 · Excellent | 97 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 2,135 | ★ 23,234 |
| First released | 2023 | 2017 |
| Replaces | Datadog APM, New Relic | Datadog APM, New Relic |
What are Grafana Beyla and Jaeger?
Grafana Beyla
Beyla is an eBPF-based tool that automatically instruments applications to produce metrics and traces without any code changes. It exports data in Prometheus and OpenTelemetry formats for existing observability stacks.
- eBPF auto-instrumentation
- No code changes needed
- Prometheus metrics export
- OpenTelemetry traces
Jaeger
Jaeger is a distributed tracing system used to monitor and troubleshoot transactions in complex microservice architectures. It supports trace collection, sampling, and root-cause analysis through a rich UI.
- Distributed transaction tracing
- Service dependency graphs
- Adaptive sampling
- OpenTelemetry compatible
Grafana Beyla vs Jaeger: key differences
Both projects are written in Go. Grafana Beyla is the lighter option, starting around 128 MB of RAM against 512 MB for Jaeger. Jaeger is the more established project (first released 2017), while Grafana Beyla arrived in 2023. Jaeger has the considerably larger community, at 23,234 GitHub stars versus 2,135.
Why pick each one
Choose Grafana Beyla if…
- Instrument without code
- Low overhead
Watch out for
- Requires modern kernel
- Limited language depth
Choose Jaeger if…
- CNCF graduated project
- Mature and widely adopted
Watch out for
- Storage backend required
- Focused only on traces
Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Beyla or Jaeger better?
Neither is universally better. Jaeger has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Grafana Beyla and Jaeger free and open-source?
Yes. Grafana Beyla is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Jaeger under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Grafana Beyla and Jaeger with Docker?
Grafana Beyla: yes. Jaeger: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Grafana Beyla or Jaeger?
Grafana Beyla has the smaller minimum footprint at 128 MB of RAM, compared to about 512 MB for Jaeger. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.