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Developer Tools · head to head

Envoy vs Rill Data

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
Rill Data logo

Rill Data

Business Intelligence

Local-first BI on DuckDB and ClickHouse with dashboards defined as code

From
$20/month
Free plan
No
Visit Rill DataFull review

The short version

  • Envoy is free; Rill Data starts at $20/mo.
  • Only Envoy lists xDS dynamic configuration; only Rill Data lists local development.
  • Prices and features on this page were last checked on 13 November 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Envoy and Rill Data actually diverge.

Attributes where Envoy and Rill Data differ
AttributeEnvoyRill Data
Starting priceFree$20/month
Pricing modelOpen-sourcePer user per month plus metered compute
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsWebWeb, Linux, macOS, Windows
CategoryDeveloper ToolsBusiness Intelligence

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 Rill Data

  • Local development
  • Dashboards as code
  • Embedded DuckDB
  • Bring your own database
  • Alerts and scheduled reports
  • Embedded analytics

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 Rill Data
  • An edge or API gateway that needs per-route retry budgets, circuit breaking and outlier detection rather than round-robin proxyingnot Rill Data
  • Migrating traffic between service versions or between a monolith and its replacement, using weighted splits and shadow trafficnot Rill Data
  • 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 Rill Data

Rill Data

  • An analytics team that wants dashboard changes to go through code review rather than being edited in a web UInot Envoy
  • Interactive exploration of event-scale data where a warehouse round trip per filter click is too slownot Envoy
  • Embedding fast slice-and-dice dashboards into a product where the underlying store is already ClickHouse or Druidnot Envoy
  • A data engineer prototyping a metrics layer locally on a laptop before committing to any cloud spendnot 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

Rill Data

  • The seat price of 20 dollars is misleading as a budget figure: Rill’s own calculator puts a small two-seat project at around 256 dollars a month, with compute making up the great majority
  • Dashboards are defined in YAML and SQL, so business users cannot create or change one without a developer and a Git workflow, which stalls self-service adoption
  • It is built for the explore-a-metric pattern and does not produce pixel-perfect financial or operational reports, so most organisations still need a second reporting tool
  • AI tokens and API calls are quota-limited per seat, with API overage at a cent per call, so programmatic consumers can create an unbudgeted line item
  • As a smaller vendor competing against Looker, Tableau and Power BI, the ecosystem of consultants, templates and trained analysts is thin, which raises the cost of hiring for it

Pricing, plan by plan

Envoy

Free

No published plan breakdown. See the Envoy review.

Rill Data

$20/month
  • Starter$20/mo
    • Per seat, up to twenty seats
    • Three projects
    • Compute at 0.15 USD per compute unit hour
  • Growth$30/mo
    • Per seat, up to one hundred seats
    • Ten projects
    • Compute at 0.20 USD per compute unit hour
  • EnterpriseOn request
    • Annual platform licence with negotiated capacity
    • Unlimited seats and projects
    • Dedicated infrastructure

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 Rill Data if

  • You need local development.
  • You work on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
  • You also want dashboards as code.
Rill Data review

Questions people ask

Is Envoy or Rill Data better?
Neither clearly leads. Envoy starts at Free and Rill Data at $20/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Envoy or Rill Data?
Envoy has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Envoy and $20/month for Rill Data.
Does Envoy or Rill Data run on more platforms?
Envoy runs on Web. Rill Data runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
Can I use Envoy for free?
Yes. Envoy has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Rill Data starts at $20/month.
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 Rill Data is typically brought in for.
What can Envoy do that Rill Data cannot?
Envoy covers xDS dynamic configuration, Protocol breadth, Filter chain architecture, Observability by default. Rill Data covers Local development, Dashboards as code, Embedded DuckDB, Bring your own database.

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.

Rill Data: Is Rill open source?

The Rill developer binary is open source and free to run locally; Rill Cloud is the paid product.

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.

Rill Data: How much does it actually cost?

Seats start at 20 USD per month, but hosted compute at 0.15 USD per compute unit hour typically dominates the bill. Bringing your own database removes the usage fee.

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.

Rill Data: Can business users build dashboards?

Not directly. Dashboards are YAML and SQL under version control.

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.

Rill Data: Which databases can back a deployed project?

DuckDB, ClickHouse, Druid, Pinot, Snowflake and others.

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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