Grafana Tempo 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?
Grafana Tempo
Easy-to-operate, high-scale distributed tracing backend
VS
Zipkin
Distributed tracing system for latency troubleshooting
| Feature | Grafana Tempo | Zipkin |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Java |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, helm | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 5,416 | ★ 17,452 |
| First released | 2020 | 2015 |
| Replaces | Datadog APM | Datadog APM |
Why pick each one
Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Tempo 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 Grafana Tempo and Zipkin free and open-source?
Yes. Grafana Tempo 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 Tempo and Zipkin with Docker?
Grafana Tempo: yes. Zipkin: yes.