OpenZipkin

Spec sheet

Purpose

Zipkin collects and looks up tracing data to help troubleshoot latency in service architectures.Read 2 Oct 2026 · zipkin.io

Deployment

The quickstart describes running Zipkin with Docker, Java, Homebrew, or from source.Read 2 Oct 2026 · zipkin.io

Support

The project directs users to its Gitter chat for questions and says the OpenZipkin organization is primarily volunteers.Read 2 Oct 2026 · zipkin.io

Maker

OpenZipkin is the open-source organization that stewards Zipkin code, documentation, specifications, and support; Zipkin was originally created at Twitter.Read 2 Oct 2026 · zipkin.io

Data collection

Applications must be instrumented to report trace data; listed transports include HTTP, Kafka, ActiveMQ, gRPC, and RabbitMQ.Read 2 Oct 2026 · zipkin.io

Dependency diagram

The UI includes a dependency diagram showing how many traced requests went through each application.Read 2 Oct 2026 · zipkin.io

Instrumentation

The instrumentation list includes supported and community-supported libraries for languages including C#, Go, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Scala, PHP, Python, and Lua.Read 2 Oct 2026 · zipkin.io

Java requirement

The quickstart says Java 17 or higher is required for its self-contained executable JAR option.Read 2 Oct 2026 · zipkin.io

Security limitation

The architecture page says the web UI has no built-in authentication.Read 2 Oct 2026 · zipkin.io

Storage

The site lists in-memory storage and persistent backends including MySQL, Cassandra, and Elasticsearch.Read 2 Oct 2026 · zipkin.io

Trace search

Users can open a trace by ID or query by service, operation name, tags, and duration.Read 2 Oct 2026 · zipkin.io

Trace summaries

The UI summarizes the percentage of time spent in a service and whether operations failed.Read 2 Oct 2026 · zipkin.io

Plans and prices

Every OpenZipkin plan and price →

Where Specifiction places it

• Monitoring Observability#20 of 307.3
• Distributed Tracing Tools#24 of 327.4
• Distributed Systems#24 of 307.3