What is Zipkin used for?

Zipkin is a distributed tracing system that helps gather timing data to troubleshoot latency problems in service architectures. It is a good fit for troubleshooting latency problems in service architectures and identifying error paths or calls to deprecated services.

Is Zipkin open source?

Yes. Zipkin is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at openzipkin/zipkin and is written mainly in Java.

Yes. Zipkin is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host Zipkin?

Yes. Zipkin can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Zipkin an alternative to?

Zipkin is an open-source alternative to Logz.io, Honeycomb, Azure Monitor and Blackfire. Other open-source alternatives to Logz.io include SigNoz, Jaeger and Kibana.

Is Zipkin actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Zipkin was on 6 August 2026, and the latest release is 3.6.1, published on 8 April 2026. The project has 17k stars on GitHub.

Zipkin: open-source alternative to Logz.io, Honeycomb

About Zipkin

Zipkin is a distributed tracing system that collects and looks up timing data to troubleshoot latency problems in service architectures. It allows users to query traces by attributes such as service, operation name, tags, and duration, and provides summaries like time spent per service and operation failure status.

The Zipkin UI includes a dependency diagram showing how many traced requests pass through each application, useful for identifying aggregate behavior like error paths or deprecated service calls. Applications must be instrumented to report trace data, typically via HTTP or Kafka, with storage options including in-memory, Apache Cassandra, or Elasticsearch.

Key features

Collects and looks up timing data for distributed tracing
Query traces by service, operation name, tags, and duration
Summarizes percentage of time spent in a service and operation failure status
Provides a dependency diagram of traced requests across applications
Supports data reporting via HTTP, Kafka, Apache ActiveMQ, gRPC, and RabbitMQ
Stores data in-memory or persistently with Apache Cassandra or Elasticsearch

Good fit for

Troubleshooting latency problems in service architectures
Identifying error paths or calls to deprecated services

Built with: Java tools
Tags: distributed tracing; latency troubleshooting; service architecture; timing data; dependency diagram

Zipkin: questions and answers

What is Zipkin used for?: Zipkin is a distributed tracing system that helps gather timing data to troubleshoot latency problems in service architectures. It is a good fit for troubleshooting latency problems in service architectures and identifying error paths or calls to deprecated services.
Is Zipkin open source?: Yes. Zipkin is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at openzipkin/zipkin and is written mainly in Java.
Is Zipkin free?: Yes. Zipkin is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Zipkin?: Yes. Zipkin can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Zipkin an alternative to?: Zipkin is an open-source alternative to Logz.io, Honeycomb, Azure Monitor and Blackfire. Other open-source alternatives to Logz.io include SigNoz, Jaeger and Kibana.
Is Zipkin actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Zipkin was on 6 August 2026, and the latest release is 3.6.1, published on 8 April 2026. The project has 17k stars on GitHub.