Phlare 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?
Phlare
Self-hosted status page and incident communication tool
VS
Zipkin
Distributed tracing system for latency troubleshooting
| Feature | Phlare | Zipkin |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | PHP | Java |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 15,183 | ★ 17,452 |
| First released | 2014 | 2015 |
| Replaces | Statuspage, Better Uptime | Datadog APM |
Why pick each one
Frequently asked questions
Is Phlare or Zipkin better?
Neither is universally better. Zipkin has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Phlare and Zipkin free and open-source?
Yes. Phlare is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and Zipkin under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Phlare and Zipkin with Docker?
Phlare: yes. Zipkin: yes.