Jaeger vs SigNoz

Jaeger is a free, open-source distributed tracing platform for monitoring complex systems and investigating performance problems. It helps teams locate bottlenecks, examine root causes, and map dependencies between services. Jaeger receives OpenTelemetry Protocol data and accepts Zipkin spans over HTTP in Thrift, JSON v1/v2, and Protobuf formats. Its UI includes System Architecture and Deep Dependency Graph views, while Service Performance Monitoring turns traces into aggregate metrics and time-series charts. Sampling supports head-based configurations, including centralized static or adaptive settings, and tail-based sampling. Cassandra, Elasticsearch, and OpenSearch are supported distributed storage backends; ClickHouse is experimental behind a feature gate. Jaeger v2 ships as binaries and container images, with an all-in-one mode using transient in-memory storage. It is self-hosted, so infrastructure determines capacity and scale. Jaeger v1 reached end of life on December 31, 2025.

SigNoz is an open-source observability tool for monitoring applications and infrastructure. It brings logs, metrics, traces, and exceptions together with alerting and separate explorers for Trace, Logs, and Metrics. The OpenTelemetry-native design does not require proprietary agents. A Query Builder supports aggregations, filters, and formulas across signal types, while alerts can detect thresholds, anomalies, and Apdex conditions. Users can create dashboards from metrics, logs, and traces. APM charts cover p99 latency, error rate, Apdex, and operations per second, alongside database and external-call monitoring. Distributed tracing uses flamegraph and Gantt-chart views to follow requests across services. SigNoz stores telemetry in ClickHouse with hot and cold tiers. It can run in the cloud or be self-hosted using Docker, Docker Swarm, or Kubernetes. Cloud provides 30-day access to all features for new users; the self-hosted Community option is free but requires users to manage infrastructure, storage, scaling, upgrades, and backups.