SHSelfHostIndex

Thanos 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?
TH Thanos Highly available Prometheus setup with long-term storage VS ZI Zipkin Distributed tracing system for latency troubleshooting
FeatureThanosZipkin
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseApache-2.0Apache-2.0
LanguageGoJava
Setup difficultyHardMedium
Min. RAM1,024 MB512 MB
Deploymentdocker, kubernetes, helmdocker, binary
GitHub stars★ 14,167★ 17,452
First released20182015
ReplacesDatadog, Grafana CloudDatadog APM

Why pick each one

Choose Thanos if…

  • Scales Prometheus to massive deployments
  • Cheap long-term storage
Thanos details

Choose Zipkin if…

  • Simple to run
  • Long-established project
Zipkin details

Frequently asked questions

Is Thanos or Zipkin better?

Zipkin is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler medium setup. Consider Thanos if its specific feature set fits your needs better.

Are Thanos and Zipkin free and open-source?

Yes. Thanos is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Zipkin under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Thanos and Zipkin with Docker?

Thanos: yes. Zipkin: yes.

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