Side by side
OpenZipkin vs Prometheus
Both stand on monitoring observability. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.
Free plan Self-hostedWeb
OpenZipkin provides trace search, summaries, and a service dependency diagram for self-hosted latency investigation. Its lack of built-in UI authentication and the need to instrument applications are important deployment considerations.
Visit OpenZipkin
Free plan LinuxMacSelf-hosted+2
Prometheus provides a free monitoring and alerting toolkit with flexible metric collection and querying. Its stated accuracy limitation makes it unsuitable for per-request billing workloads.
Visit PrometheusThe facts
| OpenZipkin | Prometheus | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Not published | Not published |
| Runs on | Self-hosted, Web | Linux, Mac, Self-hosted, Web, Windows |
| Lowest paid plan | Free or on request | Free or on request |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Maker | Not published | Not published |
| Website | zipkin.io | prometheus.io |
| On monitoring observability | #16 of 30 | #12 of 30 |
OpenZipkin: what it does well
- Search traces by ID, service, operation, tags, or duration.
- Summaries show service time and operation failures.
- Dependency diagram displays traced requests through applications.
- Supports OpenTelemetry.
- Storage includes MySQL, Cassandra, and Elasticsearch.
What to know first
- Applications must be instrumented to report trace data.
- The web UI has no built-in authentication.
- Executable JAR option requires Java 17 or higher.
Prometheus: what it does well
- Free and open source.
- PromQL queries time-series metrics.
- Targets can be discovered or configured statically.
- Server runs without external dependencies.
- TLS and HTTP Basic Authentication are supported.
What to know first
- Not recommended where data must be 100% accurate.
- Public exposure of component endpoints requires protective measures.
- Security fixes are handled on a best-effort basis.
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