About SkyWalking
Apache SkyWalking is an open source observability platform for cloud-native systems and AI. It connects service performance, model usage, and agent activity in one platform. It is suited for understanding running systems and the AI that works alongside them.
Key features
- Explore services, Kubernetes, and infrastructure with topology, traces, metrics, logs, profiles, and alerts
- Monitor model performance and token usage
- Preview Claude Code conversation replay and workspace changes
- Investigate through Horizon or a connected AI client
- Includes agents for Java, Go, Python, NodeJS, PHP, and eBPF-based Rover
SkyWalking: questions and answers
- What is SkyWalking?
- SkyWalking is an open source observability platform for cloud-native systems and AI.
- Is SkyWalking open source?
- Yes. SkyWalking is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at apache/skywalking and is written mainly in Java.
- Is SkyWalking free?
- Yes. SkyWalking is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
- Can I self-host SkyWalking?
- Yes. SkyWalking can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
- What is SkyWalking an alternative to?
- SkyWalking is an open-source alternative to Logz.io, Honeycomb and ManageEngine Applications Manager. Other open-source alternatives to Logz.io include SigNoz, Jaeger and Kibana.
- Is SkyWalking actively maintained?
- Yes. The most recent commit to SkyWalking was on 14 October 2026, and the latest release is v11.0.0, published on 28 August 2026. The project has 25k stars on GitHub.
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