# Zipkin

**Canonical:** https://apis.io/providers/zipkin/  
**Website:** https://zipkin.io  
**APIs profiled:** 6

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.

## Kin Score — 33.4 / 100 (thin)

Scored 2026-08-25 under rubric 0.14.0. Trend: flat (+0.0 from 33.4).

| Facet | Score |
|---|---|
| Discoverability | 55.6 |
| Contract Quality | 58.3 |
| Governance | 28.8 |
| Contract Governance | 28.8 |
| Operational Transparency | 10.5 |
| Developer Ergonomics | 26.2 |
| Commercial Clarity | 15.8 |
| Access Clarity | 15.8 |

## Agent readiness — 19.8 (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 | partial |
| 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 |
| Delegated Identity | no |
| Protected Resource Metadata | no |
| Dynamic Client Registration | no |
| Agentic Commerce | no |

## Access

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

## APIs (6)

- **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

## Agentic access (1)

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

## Security (1)

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

## Plans (1)

- **Zipkin Plans Pricing**

## Use cases (4)

- **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.

## Tags

Distributed Tracing, Observability, Open-Source, Microservices

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