# Azure Service Mesh vs Greymatter

**Leader by Vioscale score:** Greymatter

| Attribute | Azure Service Mesh | Greymatter |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 46.9 (4% (low)) | 52.3 (49% (low)) |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"air_gapped":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | Istio-based service mesh add-on for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) that provides observability, traffic management, and security capabilities for distributed microservices architectures. | A zero trust networking platform that secures AI-era systems with unified connectivity and security for applications, APIs, and AI workloads across cloud, Kubernetes, and hybrid environments. |
| features.capabilities | `{"proxy":"envoy","data_plane":"sidecar","vm_support":true,"cncf_maturity":"graduated"}` | `{"fips_mode":true,"multicluster":true,"automatic_mtls":true,"traffic_splitting":true,"commercial_support":true,"built_in_observability":true}` |
| integrations.count | - | 9 |
| integrations.list | - | `[{"name":"Grafana"},{"name":"Kibana"},{"name":"Prometheus"},{"name":"Splunk"},{"name":"Elasticsearch"},{"name":"Keycloak"},{"name":"PingFederate"},{"name":"Okta"},{"name":"Auth0"}]` |
| market.availability | - | `{"hqCountry":"US","primaryMarkets":["US"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | - | `{"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"open_source","sourceUrl":"https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/istio-about","retrievedAt":"2026-08-14T08:36:53.281Z"}` | `{"type":"free","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://greymatter.io/","retrievedAt":"2026-08-13T18:19:59.123Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | - | yes |
| pricing.model | open_source | free |
| pricing.price_level | free | free |
| pricing.transparent | - | no |
| reliability.status_page | yes | yes |
| security.gdpr | - | yes |

## Capabilities (Service Mesh)

| Capability | Azure Service Mesh | Greymatter |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Architecture** |  |  |
| Data plane | Sidecar | - |
| Proxy | 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 | - | ✓ |

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T17:41:19.358Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*