Comparison

Cilium vs Consul

On the evidence we track, Consul leads this comparison with a composite score of 62/100. Scores are only directly comparable because these tools share a category; the full breakdown and every source is below.

Machine formatsMarkdownJSONGraphQLAll open, no key required.
Cilium55
Consul62
Score
vioscaleAI score
Cilium55 / 100medium · 55%
Consul62 / 100medium · 51%
Pricing
Free tier
Cilium
Consul
Model
Price level
Ciliumfree
Consul
Transparent
Cilium
Consul
Integrations
Count
Cilium3
Consul
Reliability
Status page
Cilium
Consul
Adoption
Dependent repos
Cilium103
Consul67,699
Github stars
Cilium25,092
Consul30,058
Activity
Commits last 30d
Cilium100
Consul17
Release
Cadence days
Cilium5
Consul8
History
Cilium20 items
Consul20 items
License
Spdx
Consul
Language
Primary
CiliumGo
ConsulGo
Content
Faq
Cilium6 items
Consul4 items

Capabilities

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

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

What each one is

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

Cilium

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

Consul

Leader

Consul provides service mesh, service discovery, API gateway, health checking, and dynamic configuration management for applications across distributed infrastructure. Available in open-source and enterprise editions.

Independently observed

Pricing

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

Cilium

Open sourceFree tier
as of verify ↗

Consul

Leader

Pricing not documented yet.

Platform & deployment

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

Platforms
macOS
Cilium
Consul
Windows
Cilium
Consul
Linux
Cilium
Consul
CLI
Cilium
Consul
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
Cilium
Consul
Self-hosted
Cilium
Consul
On-premise
Cilium
Consul

Integrations

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

Cilium

3 total
  • SPIRE
  • Envoy
  • Prometheus
Independently observed

Consul

Leader

Not documented yet.

Still deciding?

Cilium or Consul: 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.