Comparison

Azure 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
Azure Service Mesh29
Cilium63
Score
Vioscale score
Azure Service Mesh29 / 100low · 4%
Cilium63 / 100low · 42%
Pricing
Free tier
Azure Service Mesh
Cilium
Model
Azure Service Meshopen_source
Price level
Azure Service Meshfree
Ciliumfree
Transparent
Azure Service Mesh
Cilium
Reliability
Status page
Azure Service Mesh
Cilium
Adoption
Dependent repos
Azure Service Mesh
Cilium103
Github stars
Azure Service Mesh
Cilium25,013
Activity
Commits last 30d
Azure Service Mesh
Cilium100
Release
Cadence days
Azure Service Mesh
Cilium5
History
Azure Service Mesh
Cilium20 items
License
Spdx
Azure Service Mesh
Language
Primary
Azure Service Mesh
CiliumGo

Capabilities

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

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

What each one is

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

Azure Service Mesh

Istio-based service mesh add-on for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) that provides observability, traffic management, and security capabilities for distributed microservices architectures.

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.

Azure Service Mesh

Open source
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
Linux
Azure Service Mesh
Cilium
CLI
Azure Service Mesh
Cilium
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
Azure Service Mesh
Cilium
Self-hosted
Azure Service Mesh
Cilium

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