Top Zipkin Alternatives: Distributed Tracing Solutions for Your Microservices
Zipkin is a powerful distributed tracing system designed to help troubleshoot latency issues in complex microservice architectures. It excels at collecting and looking up timing data, based on the principles of Google's Dapper paper. However, depending on your specific needs, budget, or existing infrastructure, you might be searching for a robust Zipkin alternative. This article explores some of the best tools available that offer similar or expanded capabilities for monitoring and optimizing your distributed systems.
Top Zipkin Alternatives
Whether you're looking for open-source flexibility, comprehensive commercial platforms, or specialized monitoring, these alternatives provide excellent options for distributed tracing and application performance management.
Datadog
Datadog is a comprehensive monitoring service for IT, Dev & Ops teams. It's a commercial platform available across Mac, Windows, Linux, and Web, offering extensive features like APM monitoring, cloud monitoring, error logging, network monitoring, performance monitoring, server monitoring, and web log analysis. Its SaaS model provides a full suite for large-scale application and infrastructure visibility, making it a powerful Zipkin alternative for end-to-end monitoring.
New Relic
New Relic helps pinpoint and solve performance issues across various programming languages like Ruby, Java, .NET, PHP, and Python. This Freemium web-based platform is a strong Zipkin alternative, providing deep insights into APM & Profiling, application monitoring, cloud monitoring, end-user monitoring, performance monitoring, server monitoring, and uptime monitoring, all delivered as a Software as a Service.
RapidSpike
RapidSpike is a Digital Experience Monitoring Platform that focuses on how customers interact with your online platforms. As a commercial web-based solution, it’s a valuable Zipkin alternative for real user monitoring, offering features like customer insights, uptime monitoring, digital experience monitoring, insight gathering, load testing, performance monitoring, public status pages, server monitoring, SSL certificate support, and website monitoring.
Pinpoint APM
Pinpoint is an excellent open-source APM tool specifically designed for large-scale distributed systems written in Java. Available for free on Linux, BSD, OpenJDK, and Java, it's a direct Zipkin alternative for those seeking an open-source solution with features like APM monitoring, cloud monitoring, distributed tracing capabilities, performance monitoring, and server monitoring, often deployed as a Software as a Service.
AppDynamics
AppDynamics provides a platform to analyze and optimize digital business performance in real time. Available as a free iPhone application, it offers core features like logging, server monitoring, and web log analysis. While its listed features here are concise, AppDynamics is widely recognized as a robust commercial APM solution, making it a viable enterprise-grade Zipkin alternative for comprehensive monitoring.
IQLECT
IQLECT is a real-time big data analytics platform focusing on log data, machine data, app data, and clickstreams. This Freemium web-based service is a strong Zipkin alternative for real-time insights, featuring log analytics, NoSQL database capabilities, real-time analytics, services monitoring, and the ability to track real-time data and analyze web logs.
Dynatrace
Dynatrace offers an all-in-one monitoring solution covering the entire application stack, from Java, Node.js, PHP, and .NET applications to web and mobile monitoring. This commercial platform, available on Windows, Linux, Web, Android, and iOS, is a comprehensive Zipkin alternative with robust features including application monitoring, cloud monitoring, network monitoring, real user monitoring, and server monitoring.
CloudMonix
CloudMonix is an Azure and AWS cloud monitoring and automation service designed for MSPs, CSPs, and DevOps teams. This Freemium web-based service is a specialized Zipkin alternative for cloud-centric environments, offering features like cloud monitoring, application monitoring, auto-scaling, hardware monitoring, logging, network monitoring, performance monitoring, server monitoring, services monitoring, uptime monitoring, web log analysis, and website monitoring.
2 Steps
2 Steps allows organizations using Splunk for IT operations to monitor mobile apps, websites, Windows applications, and mainframe software interfaces. This commercial solution, available as Self-Hosted or Software as a Service (SaaS) with Splunk integration, is a potent Zipkin alternative for enterprise-level APM. Its features include APM monitoring, application monitoring, cloud monitoring, network monitoring, performance monitoring, server monitoring, and uptime monitoring.
Choosing the right distributed tracing or APM solution depends heavily on your existing infrastructure, team expertise, scalability needs, and budget. While Zipkin remains a strong choice for many, these alternatives offer diverse feature sets and deployment models to help you find the perfect fit for maintaining the health and performance of your microservices.