Zipkin

Zipkin is an open source distributed tracing system for gathering timing data to troubleshoot latency problems in microservice architectures. It was originally developed at Twitter based on the Google Dapper paper, and is now a CNCF-related project maintained by the OpenZipkin community. Zipkin provides a collector, storage, and query service with a UI for visualizing trace data across distributed services.

Zipkin publishes 6 APIs on the APIs.io network, including Autocomplete API, Dependencies API, Health API, and 3 more. Tagged areas include Distributed Tracing, Observability, Open-Source, and Microservices.

The Zipkin catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 2 Spectral governance rulesets.

Zipkin’s developer surface includes documentation and 16 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

41.0/100 developing ▬ flat Agent 20/100 agent aware self hosted · Apache-2.0 Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-09-14 · rubric v0.22.0

AccessFreemium

1 APIs 6 Features 4 Use Cases

Distributed Tracing Observability Open-Source Microservices

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-09-14 · rubric v0.22.0

Composite quality — 41.0/100 · developing

Contract Quality 12.2 / 20

Developer Ergonomics 4.2 / 16

Access Clarity 2.5 / 16

Operational Transparency 3.8 / 10

Contract Governance 2.8 / 10

Discoverability 4.0 / 8

Open Source Surface 8.5 / 10

Create-or-Update Ergonomics 0.0 / 10

Agent readiness — 20/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 7 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Open Source Surface applies to this provider. This product is open source and we read its repository directly, so Open Source Surface carries 10 points of the composite. It is scored from what the repository actually publishes — a security policy, a contribution guide, a release history, a code of conduct — read live from the provider rather than inferred from our own catalog pointers. This facet adds; nothing was taken away to make room for it. An open-source project is not excused from the commercial facets, because exemption would strip it of the points it does earn. If we have the wrong repository, or this product is not open source, say so on your provider repo and we will drop the facet rather than have you publish against it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics applies to this provider. This API accepts writes, so it carries 10 points of the composite. It is scored from the published contracts themselves: whether a caller can create-or-update in one call, whether the write accepts a key the caller already holds, and whether the response says which branch ran. Without that, every write needs a search-and-branch in front of it, and the first time that check is skipped a duplicate record is created. Scored against the observed mean rather than raw — a provider at the catalog average is unchanged by this facet, not penalised by it.

The six quality facets above are damped to 80 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 20. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 80% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/zipkin: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

APIs 6

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Zipkin Autocomplete API

Autocomplete tag key and value lookups

Zipkin Dependencies API

Query service dependency links

Zipkin Health API

Server health check

Zipkin Services API

Query registered service names

Zipkin Spans API

Submit and query span names

Zipkin Traces API

Search and retrieve distributed traces

Open Collections 8

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

API Collection

OPEN COLLECTION

Zipkin API v2

OPEN COLLECTION

Zipkin API v2 Autocomplete API

OPEN COLLECTION

Zipkin API v2 Autocomplete Dependencies API

OPEN COLLECTION

Zipkin API v2 Autocomplete Health API

OPEN COLLECTION

Zipkin API v2 Autocomplete Services API

OPEN COLLECTION

Zipkin API v2 Autocomplete Spans API

OPEN COLLECTION

Zipkin API v2 Autocomplete Traces API

OPEN COLLECTION

Scroll for all 8

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Zipkin Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Zipkin Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Zipkin Finops

FINOPS

Features 6

Notable capabilities this provider offers.

Distributed Tracing

End-to-end tracing of requests across microservices.

Span Collection

Ingestion of spans via HTTP, Kafka, and other transports.

Trace Search

Query traces by service, span name, tags, and time range.

Dependency Graph

Derived service-to-service dependency links from spans.

UI

Web-based UI for exploring traces and dependency graphs.

Pluggable Storage

Pluggable backends including in-memory, MySQL, Cassandra, and Elasticsearch.

Semantic Vocabularies 1

JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.

Zipkin Context

4 classes · 20 properties

JSON-LD

Spectral Rules 2

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

Zipkin API Rules

5 rules · 3 warnings 2 info

SPECTRAL

Zipkin API Rules

6 rules · 2 errors 4 warnings

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 4

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

Annotation

2 properties

JSON SCHEMA

DependencyLink

4 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Endpoint

4 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Span

13 properties

JSON SCHEMA

JSON Structure 4

JSON Structure definitions describing this provider's data shapes.

Zipkin Api V2 Annotation Structure

2 properties

JSON STRUCTURE

Zipkin Api V2 Dependency Link Structure

4 properties

JSON STRUCTURE

Zipkin Api V2 Endpoint Structure

4 properties

JSON STRUCTURE

Zipkin Api V2 Span Structure

13 properties

JSON STRUCTURE

Examples 4

Example request and response payloads for these APIs.

Zipkin Api V2 Get Dependencies Example

4 fields

EXAMPLE

Zipkin Api V2 Get Services Example

4 fields

EXAMPLE

Zipkin Api V2 Report Spans Example

4 fields

EXAMPLE

Zipkin Api V2 Search Traces Example

4 fields

EXAMPLE

Security Posture 1

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Zipkin Domain Security

TLSv1.3

SECURITY

Agentic Access 1

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Zipkin Agentic Access

9 operations · 1 acting

AGENTIC

Use Cases 4

What developers build with this provider.

Microservices Latency Debugging

Identify slow services and operations in a microservice architecture.

Error Investigation

Trace failed requests across services to find error origin.

Service Dependency Mapping

Visualize which services call which, with call counts.

Performance Optimization

Identify hotspots and optimize critical-path operations.

Integrations 5

Pre-built integrations with other platforms and tools.

Brave

Java instrumentation library for OpenZipkin.

OpenTelemetry

OpenTelemetry can export traces to Zipkin.

Spring Cloud Sleuth

Spring framework integration emitting Zipkin traces.

Kafka

Span transport via Kafka for asynchronous ingestion.

Elasticsearch

Storage backend for spans and traces at scale.

Resources

Documentation 2

Reference material describing how the API behaves

ContributionGuide

ContributionGuide

Documentation

Documentation

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

AgenticAccess

Design & Contract 3

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

JSONLD

JSONLD

SpectralRules

SpectralRules

Vocabulary

Vocabulary

Build 5

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrganization

SDKs

SDKs

SDKs

SDKs

Access & Security 2

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

SecurityPolicy

SecurityPolicy

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Operate 2

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

IssueTracker

IssueTracker

Releases

Releases

Commercial 1

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

License

License

Company 1

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Source (apis.yml)

aid: zipkin
name: Zipkin
description: Zipkin is an open source distributed tracing system for gathering timing data to troubleshoot latency problems
  in microservice architectures. It was originally developed at Twitter based on the Google Dapper paper, and is now a CNCF-related
  project maintained by the OpenZipkin community. Zipkin provides a collector, storage, and query service with a UI for visualizing
  trace data across distributed services.
type: Index
deliveryModel:
  model: self-hosted
  license: Apache-2.0
  open_source: true
  commercial: false
  callable_host: false
  label: Self-hosted open source · you run it yourself
  confidence: high
  source:
  - license
  - openapi
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Freemium
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/zipkin.png
tags:
- Distributed Tracing
- Observability
- Open-Source
- Microservices
tags_raw:
- Distributed Tracing
- Observability
- Open Source
- Microservices
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/zipkin/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-03-25'
modified: '2026-05-19'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: zipkin:zipkin-autocomplete-api
  name: Zipkin Autocomplete API
  description: Autocomplete tag key and value lookups
  humanURL: https://zipkin.io/zipkin-api/
  tags:
  - Autocomplete
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/zipkin-autocomplete-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://zipkin.io/zipkin-api/
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-span-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-endpoint-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-annotation-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-dependency-link-schema.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-span-structure.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-endpoint-structure.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-annotation-structure.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-dependency-link-structure.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-get-services-example.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-get-dependencies-example.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-report-spans-example.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-search-traces-example.json
- aid: zipkin:zipkin-dependencies-api
  name: Zipkin Dependencies API
  description: Query service dependency links
  humanURL: https://zipkin.io/zipkin-api/
  tags:
  - Dependencies
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/zipkin-dependencies-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://zipkin.io/zipkin-api/
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-span-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-endpoint-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-annotation-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-dependency-link-schema.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-span-structure.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-endpoint-structure.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-annotation-structure.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-dependency-link-structure.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-get-services-example.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-get-dependencies-example.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-report-spans-example.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-search-traces-example.json
- aid: zipkin:zipkin-health-api
  name: Zipkin Health API
  description: Server health check
  humanURL: https://zipkin.io/zipkin-api/
  tags:
  - Health
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/zipkin-health-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://zipkin.io/zipkin-api/
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-span-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-endpoint-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-annotation-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-dependency-link-schema.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-span-structure.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-endpoint-structure.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-annotation-structure.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-dependency-link-structure.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-get-services-example.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-get-dependencies-example.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-report-spans-example.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-search-traces-example.json
- aid: zipkin:zipkin-services-api
  name: Zipkin Services API
  description: Query registered service names
  humanURL: https://zipkin.io/zipkin-api/
  tags:
  - Services
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/zipkin-services-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://zipkin.io/zipkin-api/
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-span-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-endpoint-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-annotation-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-dependency-link-schema.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-span-structure.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-endpoint-structure.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-annotation-structure.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-dependency-link-structure.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-get-services-example.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-get-dependencies-example.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-report-spans-example.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-search-traces-example.json
- aid: zipkin:zipkin-spans-api
  name: Zipkin Spans API
  description: Submit and query span names
  humanURL: https://zipkin.io/zipkin-api/
  tags:
  - Spans
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/zipkin-spans-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://zipkin.io/zipkin-api/
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-span-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-endpoint-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-annotation-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-dependency-link-schema.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-span-structure.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-endpoint-structure.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-annotation-structure.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-dependency-link-structure.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-get-services-example.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-get-dependencies-example.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-report-spans-example.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-search-traces-example.json
- aid: zipkin:zipkin-traces-api
  name: Zipkin Traces API
  description: Search and retrieve distributed traces
  humanURL: https://zipkin.io/zipkin-api/
  tags:
  - Traces
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/zipkin-traces-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://zipkin.io/zipkin-api/
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-span-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-endpoint-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-annotation-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/zipkin-api-v2-dependency-link-schema.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-span-structure.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-endpoint-structure.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-annotation-structure.json
  - type: JSONStructure
    url: json-structure/zipkin-api-v2-dependency-link-structure.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-get-services-example.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-get-dependencies-example.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-report-spans-example.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/zipkin-api-v2-search-traces-example.json
common:
- type: IssueTracker
  url: https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/issues
- type: Releases
  url: https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/releases
- type: SecurityPolicy
  url: https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/blob/master/SECURITY.md
- type: ContributionGuide
  url: https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/blob/master/.github/CONTRIBUTING.md
- type: License
  name: Apache-2.0
  url: https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin/blob/master/LICENSE
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/zipkin-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/zipkin-domain-security.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://zipkin.io
- type: Documentation
  url: https://zipkin.io/pages/quickstart.html
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/openzipkin
- type: SDKs
  url: https://github.com/openzipkin/brave
  name: Brave (Java)
- type: SDKs
  url: https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin-go
  name: zipkin-go (Go)
- type: SDKs
  url: https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin-js
  name: zipkin-js (JavaScript/Node.js)
- type: SDKs
  url: https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin-ruby
  name: zipkin-ruby (Ruby)
- type: JSONLD
  url: json-ld/zipkin-context.jsonld
- type: SpectralRules
  url: rules/zipkin-spectral.yaml
- type: Vocabulary
  url: vocabulary/zipkin-vocabulary.yaml
- data:
  - name: Distributed Tracing
    description: End-to-end tracing of requests across microservices.
  - name: Span Collection
    description: Ingestion of spans via HTTP, Kafka, and other transports.
  - name: Trace Search
    description: Query traces by service, span name, tags, and time range.
  - name: Dependency Graph
    description: Derived service-to-service dependency links from spans.
  - name: UI
    description: Web-based UI for exploring traces and dependency graphs.
  - name: Pluggable Storage
    description: Pluggable backends including in-memory, MySQL, Cassandra, and Elasticsearch.
  name: Features
  type: Features
- data:
  - name: Microservices Latency Debugging
    description: Identify slow services and operations in a microservice architecture.
  - name: Error Investigation
    description: Trace failed requests across services to find error origin.
  - name: Service Dependency Mapping
    description: Visualize which services call which, with call counts.
  - name: Performance Optimization
    description: Identify hotspots and optimize critical-path operations.
  name: UseCases
  type: UseCases
- data:
  - name: Brave
    description: Java instrumentation library for OpenZipkin.
  - name: OpenTelemetry
    description: OpenTelemetry can export traces to Zipkin.
  - name: Spring Cloud Sleuth
    description: Spring framework integration emitting Zipkin traces.
  - name: Kafka
    description: Span transport via Kafka for asynchronous ingestion.
  - name: Elasticsearch
    description: Storage backend for spans and traces at scale.
  name: Integrations
  type: Integrations
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

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