Comparison

Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh vs Cilium

On the evidence we track, Cilium leads this comparison with a composite score of 63/100. Scores are only directly comparable because these tools share a category; the full breakdown and every source is below.

Machine formatsJSONMarkdownGraphQLor send Accept: application/json
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh49
Cilium63
Score
Vioscale score
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh49 / 100low · 31%
Cilium63 / 100low · 42%
Pricing
Free tier
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh
Cilium
Model
Alibaba Cloud Service Meshfreemium
Price level
Alibaba Cloud Service Meshlow
Ciliumfree
Transparent
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh
Cilium
Reliability
Status page
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh
Cilium
Adoption
Dependent repos
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh
Cilium103
Github stars
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh
Cilium25,013
Activity
Commits last 30d
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh
Cilium100
Release
Cadence days
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh
Cilium5
History
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh
Cilium20 items
License
Spdx
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh
Language
Primary
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh
CiliumGo

Capabilities

Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for service mesh. “-” means undocumented, not absent.

Architecture
Data plane
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh-
CiliumSidecarless (eBPF)
Proxy
Alibaba Cloud Service MeshEnvoy
CiliumEnvoy
Security
Automatic mutual TLS
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh-
Cilium-
SPIFFE / SPIRE identity
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh-
Cilium-
Traffic
Traffic splitting / canary
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh-
Cilium-
Fault injection / resilience
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh-
Cilium-
Scale
Multi-cluster federation
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh-
Cilium
Portability
VM support (beyond Kubernetes)
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh-
Cilium-
Observability
Built-in observability
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh-
Cilium
Standards
Gateway API / GAMMA support
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh-
Cilium
Extensibility
WASM extensibility
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh-
Cilium-
Compliance
FIPS mode
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh-
Cilium-
Ecosystem
CNCF maturity
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh-
Cilium-
Ops
Commercial support / enterprise edition
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh-
Cilium-

What each one is

The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.

Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh

Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh (ASM) is a fully managed service mesh platform compatible with Istio that provides consistent traffic shaping, security, and observability for microservices across multiple Kubernetes clusters and virtual machines.

Independently observed

Cilium

Leader

A cloud-native networking and security platform that uses eBPF to provide networking, observability, and security capabilities. Built for Kubernetes and cloud infrastructure with integrated observability via Hubble.

Independently observed

Pricing

List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.

Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh

HybridFree tier
as of verify ↗

Cilium

Leader
Open sourceFree tier
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.

Platforms
Web
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh
Cilium
Linux
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh
Cilium
CLI
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh
Cilium
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh
Cilium
Self-hosted
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh
Cilium

Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.