Top 11 Open Source APM Tools [2026 Guide]
Choosing the right APM tool is critical for maintaining application performance. Open-source APM tools offer significant advantages over SaaS counterparts, including code transparency, no vendor lock-in, and the ability to run without complex procurement processes.
We have compiled a list of the top 11 open-source APM tools that can solve your monitoring needs.
Top Open Source APM Tools
Here are the top 11 open-source APM tools in 2026.
SigNoz
SigNoz is a one-stop open-source APM tool that provides a unified backend for metrics, traces, and logs. It is built natively on OpenTelemetry, ensuring you are not locked into a proprietary agent.
Unlike fragmented stacks that require managing separate components for each signal (e.g., Prometheus for metrics, Jaeger for traces, ELK for logs), SigNoz stores everything in a single, efficient columnar store. This architecture simplifies operations and enables powerful correlation between signals.
If you are looking for an open-source tool that solves all your application and infrastructure monitoring needs, SigNoz is the best choice. It is designed to be easy to get started, maintain, and scale, removing the operational burden often associated with self-hosting fragmented open-source stacks.
SigNoz offers a comprehensive suite of features including:
- Application Performance Monitoring (APM): Distributed tracing to pinpoint latency issues.
- Log Management: Fast query capabilities for all your logs.
- Infrastructure Monitoring: Robust monitoring for your host metrics.
- Exceptions Monitoring: Track and debug exceptions directly.
- Custom Dashboards: Powerful visualization for all your signals.
- Alerting: Proactive monitoring with flexible alert rules.
- Service Maps: Visualize architecture dependencies automatically.
Based on your use case, you can choose between different deployment options. You can start quickly with SigNoz Cloud. If you need to keep data within your infrastructure, you can choose between the Enterprise Self-Hosted edition or the free and open-source Community Edition.
Grafana
Grafana is an open-source data visualization tool that offers the LGTM stack (Loki, Grafana, Tempo, Mimir) for APM and observability. Loki handles logs, Tempo manages traces, and Mimir stores metrics, while Grafana visualizes data from these sources.
The platform is built on separate components for each signal, integrated via the Grafana interface. It supports a wide range of data sources and has a large plugin ecosystem. However, managing the individual components of the LGTM stack can be operationally complex compared to unified backends.
Key Strength: Highly flexible dashboards and visualization capabilities that integrate with almost any data source.
You can check out Grafana here.
Jaeger
Jaeger is a distributed tracing system originally built by Uber. It is designed to monitor and troubleshoot transactions in complex distributed systems. It supports OpenTelemetry and provides features like distributed context propagation, distributed transaction monitoring, and latency analysis.
Jaeger focuses specifically on the tracing aspect of APM. While it excels at visualizing call flows and identifying bottlenecks in microservices, it typically requires integration with other tools like Prometheus and Grafana to provide a complete observability picture with metrics and logs.
Key Strength: Specialized in distributed tracing for microservices architectures.
You can check out Jaeger here.
Apache Skywalking
Apache SkyWalking is an open-source APM system designed for microservices, cloud-native, and container-based architectures. It provides distributed tracing, service mesh telemetry analysis, metric aggregation, and visualization in a single platform.
It supports agents for multiple languages and offers features like topology maps to visualize service dependencies. Unlike some other tools that focus on a single signal, SkyWalking aims to provide a more integrated experience for metrics and traces.
Key Strength: Integrated APM solution specifically designed for microservices and cloud-native environments.
You can check out Apache SkyWalking here.
Elastic APM
Elastic APM is a component of the Elastic Stack (ELK) that handles application performance monitoring. It allows you to collect performance metrics, errors, and distributed traces, storing them in Elasticsearch and visualizing them in Kibana alongside your logs.
Because it leverages Elasticsearch, it benefits from powerful search and analytics capabilities. However, it requires running and managing the Elastic Stack infrastructure, which can be resource-intensive at scale.
Key Strength: Seamless integration for teams already using the ELK stack for logging.
You can check out Elastic APM here.
Pinpoint
Pinpoint is an open-source APM tool inspired by Google Dapper, designed for large-scale distributed systems. It is written in Java and PHP and provides detailed transaction tracing to help you understand the structure of your application and how components interact.
It uses bytecode instrumentation to trace requests without modifying code. Pinpoint visualizes the topology of your system and provides code-level visibility to identify specific bottlenecks within your Java or PHP applications.
Key Strength: Deep code-level visibility and transaction tracing for Java and PHP applications.
You can check out Pinpoint here.
Javamelody
JavaMelody is a lightweight monitoring tool designed to monitor Java or Java EE applications in QA and production environments. It is not a distributed tracing system but rather a profiling tool that integrates directly into your application.
It provides charts and reports on metrics like memory usage, CPU, active sessions, and JDBC connections. It is often used for simple, standalone monolithic Java applications where full-scale distributed tracing is not required.
Key Strength: Simple, low-overhead monitoring for standalone Java web applications.
You can check out JavaMelody here.
Scouter
Scouter is an open-source APM tool that offers real-time monitoring for Java applications. It captures performance data such as TPS, response time, and resource usage (CPU, Memory) and presents it in a dashboard.
It supports monitoring for Java connectivity to various databases and can track user activities. While it offers essential monitoring capabilities, it is primarily focused on the Java ecosystem.
Key Strength: Real-time performance monitoring for Java applications and their underlying infrastructure.
You can check out Scouter here.
Zipkin
Zipkin is a distributed tracing system that helps gather timing data needed to troubleshoot latency problems in service architectures. It collects data from your services and allows you to look up traces to understand request paths and latencies.
It is one of the earlier open-source tracing systems and has a simple, focused architecture. Like Jaeger, it handles tracing and relies on other tools for broader observability needs like metrics and logs.
Key Strength: A mature and simple system dedicated to distributed tracing.
You can check out Zipkin here.
Uptrace
Uptrace is an open-source APM tool that supports OpenTelemetry traces, metrics, and logs. It uses ClickHouse as its backend database, which allows it to handle high-cardinality data and perform fast queries.
It offers pre-built dashboards for common monitors and provides a SQL-based query interface. Uptrace aims to provide a cost-effective alternative to other solutions by leveraging efficiency of columnar storage.
Key Strength: Efficient handling of high-cardinality data using ClickHouse and OpenTelemetry.
You can check out Uptrace here.
OpenObserve
OpenObserve is an observability platform built in Rust that handles logs, metrics, and traces. It is designed to be a lightweight and high-performance alternative to heavier stacks like Elasticsearch.
It offers a single binary installation and uses a SQL-compatible query language. OpenObserve focuses on storage efficiency and low resource usage, making it suitable for teams looking for a performant, all-in-one backend.
Key Strength: High-performance, Rust-based platform with efficient storage and SQL capabilities.
You can check out OpenObserve here.
Top Open Source APM tools at a glance
| Tool | Capabilities | Backend Storage | OpenTelemetry Native? | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SigNoz | Metrics, Traces, Logs (Unified) | Columnar Database | Yes | MIT |
| Grafana | Visualization & Dashboards | Fragmented (Loki, Tempo, Mimir) | No | AGPLv3 |
| Jaeger | Distributed Tracing | Pluggable (ES, Cassandra) | Yes | Apache 2.0 |
| SkyWalking | APM, Service Mesh | Pluggable (ES, MySQL) | Yes | Apache 2.0 |
| Elastic APM | Metrics, Traces, Logs | Elasticsearch | No | Elastic/SSPL |
| Pinpoint | Transaction Tracing | HBase | No | Apache 2.0 |
| JavaMelody | Java Profiling | RRD Files | No | Apache 2.0 |
| Scouter | Java APM | Custom Repository | No | Apache 2.0 |
| Zipkin | Distributed Tracing | Pluggable (MySQL, Cassandra) | No | Apache 2.0 |
| Uptrace | Metrics, Traces, Logs | ClickHouse | Yes | BSL 1.1 |
| OpenObserve | Metrics, Traces, Logs | S3 / Local Disk | Yes | AGPLv3 |
Choosing the right open source APM tool
Choosing the right open-source APM tool is critical for robust application monitoring. You need a tool that is actively maintained, widely adopted, and capable of handling modern workloads.
Having a one-stop tool for all your needs helps you avoid the operational overhead of managing multiple disparate tools. A unified platform that combines APM, infrastructure monitoring, log management, and other important features/modules removes the need to use multiple tools.
Of course, we recommend SigNoz as the top choice—not just because we are the maintainers, but because it simply makes sense to use a unified platform rather than stitching together multiple tools. It is trusted by many engineering teams in production, and with over 25,000+ GitHub stars, it has a thriving community built on modern, industry-standard components.
Getting Started with SigNoz
You can choose between various deployment options in SigNoz. The easiest way to get started with SigNoz is SigNoz Cloud. We offer a 30-day free trial account with access to all features.
Those who have data privacy concerns and can't send their data outside their infrastructure can sign up for either Enterprise Self-Hosted or BYOC offering.
Those who have the expertise to manage SigNoz themselves or just want to start with a free self-hosted option can use our Community Edition.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is the best open source APM tool?
There is no single "best" tool, as it depends on your specific needs. However, SigNoz is a top contender for a unified, full-stack observability platform that rivals commercial tools like Datadog. For pure visualization, Grafana is the industry standard. For specific needs like distributed tracing in microservices, Jaeger is a popular choice.
2. Can open source APM tools replace paid tools like Datadog or New Relic?
Yes, modern open-source tools like SigNoz and the Grafana LGTM stack offer features comparable to paid SaaS platforms. They provide distributed tracing, metrics, logs, and alerting. The main trade-off is often the maintenance of self-hosting versus the convenience of a managed SaaS service.
However, tools like SigNoz bridge this gap by offering both a self-hosted open-source version and a fully managed SigNoz Cloud. We see many engineering teams adopt a hybrid approach—using the free open-source version for development environments to save costs, while leveraging the Cloud version for production workloads to ensure reliability and offload maintenance.
3. Is Prometheus an APM tool?
Technically, no. Prometheus is a metrics monitoring and alerting toolkit. While it is excellent for infrastructure and application metrics, it lacks native support for distributed tracing and log management, which are core components of APM. However, it is often combined with tools like Jaeger (for traces) and Loki (for logs) to build a complete APM stack.
4. What is the difference between APM and observability?
APM (Application Performance Monitoring) focuses on the "what"—identifying that an application is slow or down. Observability focuses on the "why"—using metrics, logs, and traces to understand the internal state of the system and debug novel issues. Modern tools like SigNoz bridge this gap by providing full observability to power your APM.
Further Reading
Kubernetes Monitoring Tools
New Relic Alternatives
Log Monitoring
