Comparison

Cilium vs Consul

On the evidence we track, Cilium leads this comparison with a composite score of 74/100. Scores are only directly comparable because these tools share a category; the full breakdown and every source is below.

Cilium full profile →Consul full profile →

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Attribute comparison across 2 tools
Attribute	CiliumLeader	Consul
Vioscale score	74 / 100low · 16%	69 / 100low · 28%
Commits last 30dactivity.commits_last_30d	100	19
Github starsadoption.github_stars	24,837	30,010
Optionsdeployment.options	{"self_hosted":true}	{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"self_hosted":true}
Longdescription.long	Cilium is an open source, cloud native solution for providing, securing, and observing network connectivity between workloads, fueled by the revolutionary Kernel technology eBPF.	Consul is a service networking solution that enables teams to manage secure network connectivity between services, across on-prem, hybrid cloud, and multi-cloud environments and runtimes.
Capabilitiesfeatures.capabilities	{"proxy":"ebpf","data_plane":"sidecarless_ebpf","multicluster":true,"cncf_maturity":"graduated","commercial_support":true,"gateway_api_support":true,"built_in_observability":true}	{"proxy":"envoy","data_plane":"sidecar","vm_support":true,"multicluster":true,"automatic_mtls":true,"traffic_splitting":true,"commercial_support":true,"gateway_api_support":true,"built_in_observability":true}
Primarylanguage.primary	Go	Go
Spdxlicense.spdx	Apache-2.0	-
Supportplatform.support	-	{"cli":true,"web":true}
Pricingpricing	{"type":"open_source","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://cilium.io","retrievedAt":"2026-08-01T15:34:37.516Z"}	-
Free tierpricing.free_tier	Yes	-
Modelpricing.model	open_source	-
Price levelpricing.price_level	free	-
Cadence daysrelease.cadence_days	5	19
Status pagereliability.status_page	-	Yes
Disclosure policysecurity.disclosure_policy	-	Yes
Iso27001security.iso27001	-	Yes
Soc2security.soc2	-	Yes

Capabilities

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

Capability comparison for Service Mesh
Capability	Cilium	Consul
Architecture
Data plane	Sidecarless (eBPF)	Sidecar
Proxy	eBPF	Envoy
Security
Automatic mutual TLS	-	✓
SPIFFE / SPIRE identity	-	-
Traffic
Traffic splitting / canary	-	✓
Fault injection / resilience	-	-
Scale
Multi-cluster federation	✓	✓
Portability
VM support (beyond Kubernetes)	-	✓
Observability
Built-in observability	✓	✓
Standards
Gateway API / GAMMA support	✓	✓
Extensibility
WASM extensibility	-	-
Compliance
FIPS mode	-	-
Ecosystem
CNCF maturity	Graduated	-
Ops
Commercial support / enterprise edition	✓	✓

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