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Developer Tools · head to head

Envoy vs Osano

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
Osano logo

Osano

Cybersecurity

Consent management and data privacy platform with a published self-serve tier

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Visit OsanoFull review

The short version

  • Envoy is free; Osano starts at $199/mo.
  • Only Envoy lists xDS dynamic configuration; only Osano lists consent banner.
  • Prices and features on this page were last checked on 13 November 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Envoy and Osano actually diverge.

Attributes where Envoy and Osano differ
AttributeEnvoyOsano
Pricing modelOpen-sourcePer month by monthly website visitors
CategoryDeveloper ToolsCybersecurity

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 Envoy

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

Only in Osano

  • Consent banner
  • Pre-consent tag blocking
  • Consent record
  • No fines guarantee
  • Subject rights requests
  • Data mapping
  • Vendor privacy monitoring
  • Cookie scanning

What people use each for

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

Envoy

  • Acting as the data plane under a service mesh or Gateway API implementation, which is how the overwhelming majority of deployments use itnot Osano
  • An edge or API gateway that needs per-route retry budgets, circuit breaking and outlier detection rather than round-robin proxyingnot Osano
  • Migrating traffic between service versions or between a monolith and its replacement, using weighted splits and shadow trafficnot Osano
  • 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 Osano

Osano

  • A mid market company selling into the EU and California that needs one banner honouring different consent rules by visitor regionnot Envoy
  • A privacy counsel who wants a vendor that will contractually stand behind its consent product rather than disclaim all liabilitynot Envoy
  • A marketing team that needs Google Consent Mode signals wired correctly so analytics and ads degrade rather than break when consent is refusednot Envoy
  • A company with a handful of brand domains wanting one consent record and one scanning schedule across all of themnot Envoy

Where each one falls short

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

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

Osano

  • The published visitor ceilings are low, with the paid self-serve tier stopping around 30,000 monthly visitors, so any consumer facing site with real traffic leaves published pricing immediately and negotiates a quote with no public anchor
  • The no fines guarantee is bounded and conditional on configuring the product as instructed, so it is a marketing differentiator with an indemnity cap rather than the insurance policy the name suggests, and the limits should be read before it influences a decision
  • Everything beyond consent, including subject rights automation, data mapping and vendor monitoring, is enterprise quoted, so the transparent pricing that attracts buyers covers only the cheapest part of the platform
  • Tag blocking depends on tags being loaded through the mechanisms Osano can intercept, and marketing teams that inject scripts directly into templates or through server side tagging routinely leak trackers past the banner without anyone noticing
  • It is a privacy platform rather than a security compliance one, so organisations that also need SOC 2 or ISO 27001 evidence collection run it alongside a separate tool and duplicate parts of the vendor and asset inventory

Pricing, plan by plan

Envoy

Free

No published plan breakdown. See the Envoy review.

Osano

Free
  • FreeFree
    • 1 user
    • 1 domain
    • 5,000 monthly visitors
  • Plus$199/mo
    • 2 users
    • 3 domains
    • 30,000 monthly visitors
  • EnterpriseOn request
    • Unlimited domains and higher visitor volumes
    • Subject rights request automation
    • Data mapping and assessments

Which should you pick?

Choose Envoy if

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

Choose Osano if

  • You need consent banner.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You also want pre-consent tag blocking.
Osano review

Questions people ask

Is Envoy or Osano better?
Neither clearly leads. Envoy starts at Free and Osano at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Envoy or Osano?
Envoy starts at Free and Osano at Free.
Does Envoy or Osano run on more platforms?
Both run on Web, so platform support will not decide this one for you.
Can I use Envoy for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Envoy best used for?
Envoy is most often used for acting as the data plane under a service mesh or gateway api implementation, which is how the overwhelming majority of deployments use it, an edge or api gateway that needs per-route retry budgets, circuit breaking and outlier detection rather than round-robin proxying, migrating traffic between service versions or between a monolith and its replacement, using weighted splits and shadow traffic, standardising observability across a polyglot estate, so that latency, error rates and tracing look the same regardless of the language a service is written in. Of those, acting as the data plane under a service mesh or gateway api implementation, which is how the overwhelming majority of deployments use it and an edge or api gateway that needs per-route retry budgets, circuit breaking and outlier detection rather than round-robin proxying are not what Osano is typically brought in for.
What can Envoy do that Osano cannot?
Envoy covers xDS dynamic configuration, Protocol breadth, Filter chain architecture, Observability by default. Osano covers Consent banner, Pre-consent tag blocking, Consent record, No fines guarantee.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

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.

Osano: Does the free tier include the no fines guarantee?

No. The guarantee attaches to paid use of the consent product, and the free tier is capped at one domain and 5,000 monthly visitors.

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.

Osano: How is Osano priced?

By monthly website visitors, number of domains and tier. The self-serve path stops at a low visitor ceiling and everything above is quoted.

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.

Osano: Can it handle US state privacy laws as well as GDPR?

Yes, with region aware rule sets covering GDPR, ePrivacy and the US state regimes, so an EU visitor sees an opt-in banner and a US visitor sees the applicable opt-out.

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.

Osano: Does Osano do subject access requests?

Yes, but in the enterprise tier rather than the published plans, and it is quoted separately from consent.

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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