Developer Tools · head to head
Earthly vs Envoy
Envoy
Technology
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
The short version
- Each has a real cost: Earthly pricing model not published; requires sales contact; 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.
- They diverge on capability: Earthly covers Policy as code, Envoy covers xDS dynamic configuration.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 30 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Earthly and Envoy actually diverge.
Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated).
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 Earthly
- Policy as code
- Multi-stage enforcement
- AI agent governance
- Repository-wide policies
- Incident response automation
- Compliance management
- Earthfiles build tool
- Satellites
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.
Earthly
- Enforcing engineering standards across AI and human developersnot Envoy
- Automating incident response procedures across all repositoriesnot Envoy
- Embedding compliance requirements into development workflowsnot Envoy
- Standardizing build processes with Earthfilesnot 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 Earthly
- An edge or API gateway that needs per-route retry budgets, circuit breaking and outlier detection rather than round-robin proxyingnot Earthly
- Migrating traffic between service versions or between a monolith and its replacement, using weighted splits and shadow trafficnot Earthly
- 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 Earthly
Where each one falls short
Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.
Earthly
- Pricing model not published; requires sales contact
- Earthly Lunar is a recent launch (2025) with limited track record
- Primarily GitHub-focused; limited integration with other platforms
- No public documentation on pricing or feature tiers
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
Earthly
FreeNo published plan breakdown. See the Earthly review.
Envoy
FreeNo published plan breakdown. See the Envoy review.
Which should you pick?
Choose Earthly if
- You need policy as code.
- You want to start without paying.
- You work on Web, CLI.
- You also want multi-stage enforcement.
Choose Envoy if
- You need xds dynamic configuration.
- You want to start without paying.
- You also want protocol breadth.
Questions people ask
- Is Earthly or Envoy better?
- Neither clearly leads. Earthly 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, Earthly or Envoy?
- Earthly starts at Free and Envoy at Free.
- Does Earthly or Envoy run on more platforms?
- Earthly runs on Web, CLI. Envoy runs on Web.
- Can I use Earthly for free?
- Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
- What is Earthly best used for?
- Earthly is most often used for enforcing engineering standards across ai and human developers, automating incident response procedures across all repositories, embedding compliance requirements into development workflows, standardizing build processes with earthfiles. Of those, enforcing engineering standards across ai and human developers and automating incident response procedures across all repositories are not what Envoy is typically brought in for.
- What can Earthly do that Envoy cannot?
- Earthly covers Policy as code, Multi-stage enforcement, AI agent governance, Repository-wide policies. Envoy covers xDS dynamic configuration, Protocol breadth, Filter chain architecture, Observability by default.
Answered from the vendors’ own pages
Earthly: What is the difference between Earthfiles and Earthly Lunar?
Earthfiles is an open-source build tool that reached 12,000 GitHub stars and is used by companies like NVIDIA, Intel, and Databricks. Earthly Lunar is a separate governance platform launched in 2025 for enforcing standards across development workflows.
SourceEnvoy: 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.
Earthly: How does Earthly Lunar enforce standards?
Lunar converts engineering standards, compliance requirements, and processes documented in AGENTS.md files, wikis, and incident postmortems into enforceable guardrails that apply consistently across repositories and development stages.
SourceEnvoy: 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.
Earthly: What is the pricing for Earthly Lunar?
Pricing is not published on the website. Interested customers should contact Earthly's sales team for current pricing and feature tiers.
SourceEnvoy: 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.
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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