Comparison

AWS App Mesh vs Cilium

No clear leader: AWS App Mesh (60.4) and Cilium (55.8) are within the 5-point margin; treat as a tie. The attribute-by-attribute breakdown below, with a source and date on every value, is the honest way to compare them.

Machine formatsMarkdownJSONGraphQLMarkdown is open. JSON and GraphQL need a free key.
AWS App Mesh60
Cilium56
Score
vioscaleAI score
AWS App Mesh60 / 100medium · 69%
Cilium56 / 100medium · 54%
Pricing
Free tier
AWS App Mesh✓
Cilium✓
Model
AWS App Meshfreemium
Price level
AWS App Meshlow
Ciliumfree
Transparent
AWS App Mesh✗
Cilium✓
Integrations
Count
AWS App Mesh5
Cilium3
Security
Disclosure policy
AWS App Mesh✓
Cilium–
Fedramp
AWS App Mesh✓
Cilium–
Gdpr
AWS App Mesh✓
Cilium–
Hipaa
AWS App Mesh✓
Cilium–
Iso27001
AWS App Mesh✓
Cilium–
Pci
AWS App Mesh✓
Cilium–
Scorecard
AWS App Mesh–
Cilium5.8
Soc2
AWS App Mesh✓
Cilium–
Trust center
Reliability
Status page
AWS App Mesh✓
Cilium–
Adoption
Dependent repos
AWS App Mesh–
Cilium103
Github stars
AWS App Mesh–
Cilium25,603
Activity
Commits last 30d
AWS App Mesh–
Cilium100
Release
Cadence days
AWS App Mesh–
Cilium5
History
AWS App Mesh–
Cilium20 items
License
Spdx
AWS App Mesh–
Language
Primary
AWS App Mesh–
CiliumGo
Market
Availability
Content
Faq
AWS App Mesh5 items
Cilium6 items

Capabilities

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

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

What each one is

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

AWS App Mesh

AWS App Mesh is an application networking service that provides consistent visibility and network traffic controls for microservices. It uses sidecar proxies to manage service communication, observability, and security without requiring application code changes.

Independently observed

Cilium

Cilium is an open-source networking layer for Kubernetes that uses eBPF to provide container-to-container communication, load balancing, network policies, multi-cluster connectivity, and deep observability across single or multiple clusters.

Independently observed

Pricing

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

AWS App Mesh

Usage-basedFree tier

Pay-as-you-go usage-based pricing; specific pricing rates not disclosed on provided pages

as of verify ↗

Cilium

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
AWS App Mesh✓
Cilium✗
Linux
AWS App Mesh✗
Cilium✓
CLI
AWS App Mesh✓
Cilium✓
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
AWS App Mesh✓
Cilium✓
Self-hosted
AWS App Mesh✗
Cilium✓
Hybrid
AWS App Mesh✗
Cilium✓

Integrations

What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.

AWS App Mesh

5 total
  • AWS CloudWatch
  • AWS X-Ray
  • Datadog
  • Alcide
  • Aqua
Independently observed

Cilium

3 total
  • SPIRE
  • Envoy
  • Prometheus
Independently observed
Still deciding?

AWS App Mesh or Cilium: which one depends on you

A composite score cannot know your constraints. Describe them and both get re-weighted against what you actually need, with the evidence behind every position.

Free to run, no account needed to start. How the evaluation works

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