Grafana k6 vs Zipkin

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
FeatureGrafana k6Zipkin
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseAGPL-3.0Apache-2.0
LanguageGoJava
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM256 MB512 MB
Deploymentdocker, binary, bare-metaldocker, binary
GitHub stars★ 31,211★ 17,452
First released20172015
ReplacesLoadRunner, BlazeMeterDatadog APM

Why pick each one

Choose Grafana k6 if…

  • Developer-friendly scripting
  • Great CI integration
Grafana k6 details

Choose Zipkin if…

  • Simple to run
  • Long-established project
Zipkin details

Frequently asked questions

Is Grafana k6 or Zipkin better?

Neither is universally better. Grafana k6 has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are Grafana k6 and Zipkin free and open-source?

Yes. Grafana k6 is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Zipkin under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Grafana k6 and Zipkin with Docker?

Grafana k6: yes. Zipkin: yes.

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