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Business Intelligence · head to head

Cabin vs Envoy

Cabin logo

Cabin

Business Intelligence

Cookieless web analytics that also reports the carbon footprint of your website

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Visit CabinFull review
Envoy logo

Envoy

Developer Tools

A high-performance L7 proxy written in C++ that is configured by an API rather than a config file, and is usually deployed under a control plane.

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Visit EnvoyFull review

The short version

  • Cabin is a privacy-first analytics tool.
  • Envoy is free; Cabin starts at $14/mo.
  • Only Cabin lists cookieless tracking; only Envoy lists xDS dynamic configuration.
  • Prices and features on this page were last checked on 13 November 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Cabin and Envoy actually diverge.

Attributes where Cabin and Envoy differ
AttributeCabinEnvoy
Pricing modelPer month by pageview volumeOpen-source
CategoryBusiness IntelligenceDeveloper Tools

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), platforms (Web).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Cabin

  • Cookieless tracking
  • Carbon reporting
  • 1.2kb script
  • Custom events
  • Ad-blocker bypass
  • MCP access
  • Branded dashboards
  • EU data storage

Only in Envoy

  • xDS dynamic configuration
  • Protocol breadth
  • Filter chain architecture
  • Observability by default
  • Outlier detection
  • Traffic shaping
  • mTLS termination and origination
  • Hot restart

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Cabin

  • Replacing Google Analytics on a site where a cookie consent banner is hurting conversion and you do not need behavioural advertising datanot Envoy
  • An organisation with a published sustainability commitment that needs a reportable figure for its website emissionsnot Envoy
  • An agency managing many client sites that wants unlimited domains and branded client dashboards for a flat $45 a monthnot Envoy
  • A developer who wants to query site analytics conversationally through an MCP-connected assistant rather than reading a dashboardnot Envoy

Envoy

  • Acting as the data plane under a service mesh or Gateway API implementation, which is how the overwhelming majority of deployments use itnot Cabin
  • An edge or API gateway that needs per-route retry budgets, circuit breaking and outlier detection rather than round-robin proxyingnot Cabin
  • Migrating traffic between service versions or between a monolith and its replacement, using weighted splits and shadow trafficnot Cabin
  • Standardising observability across a polyglot estate, so that latency, error rates and tracing look the same regardless of the language a service is written innot Cabin

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Cabin

  • The analytics are deliberately shallow: no funnels, no cohort retention, no session replay and no user-level journeys, so anything beyond traffic and event counts requires a second tool
  • Carbon figures are modelled from bytes transferred using CO2.js assumptions about grid intensity and device energy, not measured, so they are directionally useful and should never be presented as audited emissions data
  • Cabin is a product of Normally, a design studio, rather than a company whose sole business is analytics, which puts a reasonable question mark over long-term roadmap investment and support depth
  • The 30-day retention on the free tier and 12 months on Plus mean year-on-year comparison needs the $45 Scale plan, which is a large jump for a small site that only wanted longer history
  • Because it does not use cookies or cross-site identifiers, returning-visitor and multi-session attribution are approximations, which matters if anyone in the business is trying to reconcile it with an ad platform's numbers

Envoy

  • The configuration surface is very large and hand-written bootstrap YAML runs to hundreds of lines for routing that Nginx expresses in twenty, which is why nearly every production deployment sits under a control plane and inherits that control plane's constraints as well
  • xDS is the real API and it is not stable in the comfortable sense; the v2 API set was removed outright, resource types continue to be deprecated, and your control plane and Envoy binaries have to be upgraded roughly in step or the proxies stop accepting configuration
  • Extending it properly means writing a C++ filter and building and maintaining your own Envoy binary; the alternatives are Lua, which adds per-request overhead, and proxy-wasm, whose ABI has remained effectively experimental for years with a real performance cost
  • At sidecar density the per-proxy memory and CPU footprint is a measurable share of cluster capacity, since thousands of workloads each carry a full proxy, and this is precisely the cost that has pushed mesh projects towards node-level or ambient architectures
  • There is no single vendor selling support for Envoy itself; you get the community plus control-plane vendors such as Solo.io and Tetrate, so an Envoy-level production bug is your own engineers in a C++ codebase unless a support contract happens to cover it
  • Diagnosing why a request got a particular response involves reading config dumps, the stats endpoint and the RESPONSE_FLAGS codes in access logs rather than a readable error, which is a specific skill you must hire or spend months growing

Pricing, plan by plan

Cabin

Free
  • FreeFree
    • 1 domain
    • 10,000 pageviews per month
    • 30-day data retention
  • Plus$14/mo
    • Up to 10 domains
    • 100,000 pageviews per month
    • 12-month retention
  • Scale$45/mo
    • Unlimited domains
    • 5,000,000 pageviews per month
    • Unlimited retention

Envoy

Free

No published plan breakdown. See the Envoy review.

Which should you pick?

Choose Cabin if

  • You need cookieless tracking.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You also want carbon reporting.
Cabin review

Choose Envoy if

  • You need xds dynamic configuration.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You also want protocol breadth.
Envoy review

Questions people ask

Is Cabin or Envoy better?
Neither clearly leads. Cabin starts at Free and Envoy at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Cabin or Envoy?
Cabin starts at Free and Envoy at Free.
Does Cabin or Envoy run on more platforms?
Both run on Web, so platform support will not decide this one for you.
Can I use Cabin for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Cabin best used for?
Cabin is most often used for replacing google analytics on a site where a cookie consent banner is hurting conversion and you do not need behavioural advertising data, an organisation with a published sustainability commitment that needs a reportable figure for its website emissions, an agency managing many client sites that wants unlimited domains and branded client dashboards for a flat $45 a month, a developer who wants to query site analytics conversationally through an mcp-connected assistant rather than reading a dashboard. Of those, replacing google analytics on a site where a cookie consent banner is hurting conversion and you do not need behavioural advertising data and an organisation with a published sustainability commitment that needs a reportable figure for its website emissions are not what Envoy is typically brought in for.
What can Cabin do that Envoy cannot?
Cabin covers Cookieless tracking, Carbon reporting, 1.2kb script, Custom events. Envoy covers xDS dynamic configuration, Protocol breadth, Filter chain architecture, Observability by default.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Cabin: Do I need a cookie consent banner with Cabin?

No. It sets no cookies and collects no cross-site identifiers, and data is stored in the EU, which is the specific reason most buyers switch to it.

Envoy: Should I run Envoy on its own, or under a control plane?

Almost always under one. Directly authoring xDS or static bootstrap configuration is viable for a handful of routes and becomes unmanageable beyond that. Envoy Gateway, Istio, Contour, Gloo and Consul all exist to generate that configuration for you.

Cabin: How accurate is the carbon measurement?

It is an estimate derived from data transfer using the CO2.js model. It is reliable for tracking change over time on your own site and unsuitable as an audited emissions figure.

Envoy: How does it compare with Nginx or HAProxy?

Envoy is dynamically configured over an API and instrumented far more heavily; Nginx and HAProxy are faster to configure and lighter for straightforward reverse proxying. If you never need to change routing without a reload, Envoy is more machinery than the problem requires.

Cabin: Who makes Cabin?

It was built at Normally, a research and design studio in London, out of work on data, privacy and the carbon footprint of digital products.

Envoy: What does it cost?

Nothing to licence; it is Apache 2.0 and there is no paid edition. The cost is engineering time and, for most organisations, a commercial control plane or cloud service that packages it.

Cabin: Can it replace Google Analytics entirely?

For traffic, referrer and event reporting, yes. For advertising attribution, audience building and funnel analysis, no.

Envoy: Can I write extensions without C++?

You can write Lua filters or proxy-wasm modules in Rust, Go, C++ or AssemblyScript. Both carry per-request overhead compared with a native filter, and the Wasm path has been slower to stabilise than the project originally projected.

Envoy: Is it a CNCF project?

Yes, it is a graduated CNCF project licensed under Apache 2.0, which means the trademark and governance sit with the foundation rather than with Lyft or any vendor.

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