Jaeger vs Telegraf
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?
Jaeger
End-to-end distributed tracing for microservices
VS
Telegraf
Plugin-driven server agent for collecting metrics
| Feature | Jaeger | Telegraf |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Language | Go | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, helm | docker, kubernetes, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 23,082 | ★ 17,736 |
| First released | 2017 | 2015 |
| Replaces | Datadog APM, New Relic | Datadog Agent |
Why pick each one
Frequently asked questions
Is Jaeger or Telegraf better?
Neither is universally better. Jaeger has the larger community, while Telegraf is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Jaeger and Telegraf free and open-source?
Yes. Jaeger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Telegraf under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Jaeger and Telegraf with Docker?
Jaeger: yes. Telegraf: yes.