Alternatives to Apache SkyWalking
Observe distributed applications through traces, metrics and related service information. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Apache SkyWalking
Observe distributed applications through traces, metrics and related service information.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Apache SkyWalking.
SigNoz
Open-source full-stack observability platform built on OpenTelemetry and ClickHouse.
SigNoz combines APM, logs, traces and metrics on OpenTelemetry and ClickHouse, but running its ClickHouse-backed stack adds operational overhead and some features sit in paid tiers.
Jaeger
Follow requests across services to investigate distributed-system latency.
Jaeger is an Apache-2.0 tracing tool focused on following requests and comparing service timing, without SkyWalking's broader application-performance and metrics views.
Pinpoint
Trace application requests across distributed services.
Pinpoint is Apache-2.0 licensed and traces requests while visualizing service relationships, but supported languages and frameworks depend on its compatible agents.
Zipkin
Collect trace timing data to troubleshoot service-to-service latency.
Zipkin is an Apache-2.0 trace collector for service-to-service latency, narrower than SkyWalking since it centres on trace lookup rather than wider service metrics.
Coroot
Investigate application behavior using automatically collected observability data.
Coroot combines service views with metrics and traces using eBPF-based collection, which reduces instrumentation work but needs compatible Linux hosts and has freemium pricing.
Uptrace
Explore traces, metrics and logs collected through OpenTelemetry.
Uptrace explores traces, metrics and logs collected through OpenTelemetry under AGPL-3.0, with freemium pricing rather than SkyWalking's fully free Apache-2.0 licence.
HyperDX
Investigate application failures using linked logs, traces and related telemetry.
HyperDX links logs, traces and related telemetry for debugging under the MIT licence, with freemium pricing, and still requires instrumentation and supporting data storage.
OpenObserve
Collect logs, metrics and traces in a unified observability application.
OpenObserve collects logs, metrics and traces in one AGPL-3.0 application, with hosted services and enterprise features priced separately from the self-hosted version.
Also worth comparing
These listings name Apache SkyWalking as their own alternative, so the relationship runs both ways.
Grafana Tempo
Store and query distributed traces with a dedicated tracing back end.
Apache SkyWalking adds application-performance views and metrics alongside traces, which requires deploying its collectors and configuring supported instrumentation.
New Relic
A hosted observability platform for application performance, infrastructure, logs and alerting, with a free tier.
Apache SkyWalking is free Apache-2.0 self-hosted application performance monitoring using traces and metrics, needing collectors and instrumentation you deploy.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
OpenTelemetry Collector
Receive, process and export telemetry through a vendor-neutral collector.
Grafana
Dashboard and visualization front end for metrics, logs and traces.
Prometheus
Metrics database that scrapes targets and evaluates alerting rules.
