Kuma
The universal Envoy service mesh for distributed service connectivity
- Also known as
- kuma
What is Kuma?
Open-source control plane for service mesh delivering security, observability, routing and more. Built on Envoy with support for Kubernetes, VMs, and multi-cluster deployments.
Kuma pricing
We don't have Kuma's full plan breakdown yet (its pricing page resisted automated reading). Here's what we could confirm. Always check live pricing for exact numbers.
What Kuma does
The capabilities that matter for service mesh, normalised so it lines up with every alternative. “-” means we haven't confirmed it, not that it's missing.
- Data plane
- Sidecar
- Proxy
- Envoy
- Automatic mutual TLS
- ✓
- SPIFFE / SPIRE identity
- ✗
- Traffic splitting / canary
- ✗
- Fault injection / resilience
- ✓
- Multi-cluster federation
- ✓
- VM support (beyond Kubernetes)
- ✓
- Built-in observability
- ✓
- Gateway API / GAMMA support
- ✓
- WASM extensibility
- ✗
- FIPS mode
- ✗
- CNCF maturity
- Sandbox
- Commercial support / enterprise edition
- ✓
Platform & deployment
Independently observed- CLI
- Web
- Hybrid
- Self-hosted
Integrations (4)
Independently observed- Prometheus
- Grafana
- Datadog
- OpenTelemetry
Kuma alternatives
Other service mesh we track, ranked by the same independent score.
- IstioService Mesh. Simplified.low · 15%
- LinkerdEnterprise power without enterprise complexitylow · 15%
- CiliumeBPF-based Networking, Observability, Securitylow · 16%
- Google Cloud Service MeshThe fully managed service mesh based on Envoy and Istiolow · 30%
- ConsulSecure network serviceslow · 28%
- AWS App MeshApplication-level networking for all your serviceslow · 29%
The Vioscale score: one lens on the evidence
Not user reviews and not a paid placement: a confidence-weighted blend of the independent signals below (adoption, activity, security posture, and more), which you can sort and re-weight yourself. Vendors can correct their listing but can never move their rank, and stars are weighted low as a vanity metric. It is one way to read the evidence for Kuma, not the verdict.
| Signal | Score | Weight | Contribution | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Github Activity | 63 | 18.00 | 1135.8 | ✓ |
| Capabilities | 87 | 12.00 | 1040.6 | ✓ |
| Price Level | 100 | 8.00 | 800.0 | ✓ |
| Github Stars | 68 | 5.00 | 339.6 | ✓ |
| Integrations | 20 | 16.00 | 321.6 | ✓ |
| Reliability | 0 | 30.00 | 0.0 | - |
| Release Cadence | 0 | 10.00 | 0.0 | - |
| Security Posture | 0 | 22.00 | 0.0 | - |
| Package Downloads | 0 | 26.00 | 0.0 | - |
| Pricing Transparency | 0 | 12.00 | 0.0 | - |
| Stackoverflow Activity | 0 | 12.00 | 0.0 | - |
Computed . Re-weight it by intent, or see the full method.
All data & sourcesshow ↓
Every value we hold, with its source, retrieval date, and confidence. This is the evidence behind the score: don't trust it, verify it.
Activity
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Commits last 30d | 100 | mediumsource · 2026-08-01 · 65% |
Adoption
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Github stars | 3,987 | highsource · 2026-08-01 · 90% |
Features
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Capabilities | {"proxy":"envoy","fips_mode":false,"data_plane":"sidecar","vm_support":true,"multicluster":true,"cncf_maturity":"sandbox","automatic_mtls":true,"fault_injection":true,"spiffe_identity":false,"traffic_splitting":false,"commercial_support":true,"wasm_extensibility":false,"gateway_api_support":true,"built_in_observability":true} | mediumsource · 2026-08-01 · 60% |
Integrations
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Count | 4 | mediumsource · 2026-08-01 · 60% |
Language
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Primary | Go | highsource · 2026-08-01 · 90% |
License
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Spdx | Apache-2.0 | highsource · 2026-08-01 · 95% |