Zipkin
NewA distributed tracing system
Data collected ·ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode·coverage 100%·next run
- Zipkin ranks #36 of 45 in Observability with an AI visibility score of 0.3 (SlateIndex, Nov 3, 2026).
- Zipkin is most visible on ChatGPT (0.9) and least on Perplexity (0).
- AI engines name Zipkin in 1 of the 30 Observability buyer prompts SlateIndex tracks.
- grafana.com is the source AI engines cite most in answers about Zipkin, with 2 citations.
About
Company details for Zipkin
Zipkin is a distributed tracing system that gathers timing data to troubleshoot latency problems in service architectures. It collects trace data and lets users look it up by trace ID or by attributes such as service, operation name, tags and duration. Its UI summarizes time spent per service and failed operations and shows a dependency diagram of how many traced requests went through each application. It ranks #36 of 45 in Observability on SlateIndex and has a visibility score of 0.3 in the latest weekly run.
Its differentiator: simplicity and ease of deployment, popular among developers.
- Website
- zipkin.io
- Categories
- Observability
- Founded
- 2012
- Company type
- Open source project
- Deployment
- Self-hosted: run the self-contained executable jar or the openzipkin/zipkin Docker image. The server requires JRE 17 or newer and serves the UI on port 9411 by default.
- Support
- Zipkin Gitter chat channel, GitHub issues
Read from tracxn.com, twitter.com, zipkin.io, github.com, checkthat.ai, lumigo.io · refreshed Nov 3, 2026.
AI visibility
Latest weekly run · Nov 3 · next run Nov 9
Visibility score trend
Weekly runs over the last 60 days, with up to 7 competitors. Click a name to hide or show its line.
Changes appear after the second weekly run in Observability. Datadog leads the category at 69.5%.
Media
Website and product screenshots for Zipkin
AI mentions & citations
Recent answers that name Zipkin
Products & features
What Zipkin sells
Zipkin
Distributed tracing system that collects, stores and serves trace data, with a UI for querying traces and viewing a dependency diagram.
Zipkin Slim
Slim server variant of Zipkin.
Target market & buyers
Developers and operators of service architectures
Funding & recent developments
Funding
| Latest known round | Total raised |
|---|---|
| — | — |
Recent developments
- Aug 2026SecurityCVE-2026-82265 published
Zipkin through 3.6.1 exposes Actuator endpoints on the tracing API port without authentication. Sonatype rates it 6.9 and OpenCVE rates it 6.5.
- Dec 2025ProductOpenTelemetry deprecates its Zipkin exporter specification
OpenTelemetry deprecated its Zipkin exporter specification in favor of Zipkin's native OTLP ingestion. Existing Zipkin exporters get security patches and critical fixes until at least December 2026.
- Jul 2025SecurityCVE-2025-53602 advisory published
Zipkin through 3.5.1 exposes a /heapdump endpoint tied to Spring Boot Actuator. GitLab rates it 5.3 (medium) with no solution available at the time; Sonatype rates it 8.7 (high).
Competitive landscape
How Zipkin compares with its top three alternatives
Zipkin most often appears alongside Datadog, Grafana, OpenTelemetry in AI answers.
| Brand | Visibility | Share of voice | vs last week | Starting price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zipkin | 0.3% | 0.1% | New | Pricing not available |
| Datadog | 69.5% | 11% | New | $0.05 / mo |
| Grafana | 47.8% | 9.8% | New | Free plan |
| OpenTelemetry | 37.4% | 8.2% | New | Pricing not available |
| Splunk | 22.5% | 5.8% | New | Free plan |
Cite as: SlateIndex, “Zipkin AI visibility profile”, https://slateindex.ai/brand/zipkin, data of Nov 3, 2026. Licence: CC BY 4.0.