# Apache Zipkin

**Canonical:** https://apis.io/providers/apache-zipkin/  
**Website:** https://zipkin.io/  
**APIs profiled:** 4

Apache Zipkin is a distributed tracing system that helps gather timing data needed to troubleshoot latency problems in service architectures. It manages both the collection and lookup of tracing data through a collector and query service. Zipkin provides a REST API, web UI, and multiple storage backends (Cassandra, Elasticsearch, MySQL). It supports the B3 propagation format and is compatible with OpenZipkin instrumentation libraries. Originally created at Twitter, it is now maintained as an open-source project.

## Kin Score — 35.0 / 100 (thin)

Scored 2026-08-20 under rubric 0.12.0. Trend: flat (+0.0 from 35.0).

| Facet | Score |
|---|---|
| Discoverability | 64.8 |
| Contract Quality | 44.6 |
| Governance | 0.0 |
| Contract Governance | 0.0 |
| Operational Transparency | 34.2 |
| Developer Ergonomics | 38.1 |
| Commercial Clarity | 26.3 |
| Access Clarity | 26.3 |

## Agent readiness — 20.5 (agent-aware)

| Dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Spec Presence | yes |
| Agentic Access | derived |
| Reversibility Documented | no |
| MCP Server | no |
| Auth Clarity | no |
| Idempotency | no |
| Error Semantics | no |
| OpenAPI Examples | no |
| Rate Limit Signal | documented |
| Event Surface Described | no |
| Agent Skills | no |
| Well Known Catalog | no |
| Consent Identity | no |
| Agent Card | no |
| Dry Run Mode | no |

## Access

Freemium — onboarding: unknown, pricing: freemium, trial: no (confidence: medium).

## APIs (4)

- **Apache Zipkin autocomplete API** — Tag key/value autocompletion
- **Apache Zipkin services API** — Service discovery and dependency links
- **Apache Zipkin spans API** — Ingest spans and query span names
- **Apache Zipkin traces API** — Query trace data

## Agentic access (1)

- **Apache Zipkin Agentic Access** — 9 operations · 1 acting

## Security (1)

- **Apache Zipkin Domain Security** — TLSv1.3

## Plans (1)

- **Apache Zipkin Plans Pricing**

## Use cases (4)

- **Microservices Latency Troubleshooting** — Identify bottlenecks and slow service calls in distributed architectures.
- **Service Dependency Mapping** — Automatically discover and visualize service-to-service call graphs.
- **Performance Regression Detection** — Compare trace data before and after deployments to detect performance regressions.
- **Root Cause Analysis** — Follow distributed call chains to identify the root cause of errors and failures.

## Tags

Distributed Tracing, Microservices, Monitoring, Observability, Open-Source

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Profiled by [API Evangelist](https://apievangelist.com) and published on [APIs.io](https://apis.io/providers/apache-zipkin/). Scores are computed from the provider's own public artifacts under a published rubric.