Ciliumvs
Kubernetes
Kubernetes: The platform Cilium plugs into as its networking layer
Cilium
eBPF-based networking, observability and security for Kubernetes
As of 29 August 2026, Cilium is free to use. CNCF-graduated Kubernetes networking built on eBPF, replacing iptables with kernel-level programs. Softwr lists it under Cloud. Cilium is made by Cloud Native Computing Foundation, available on Self-hosted, Linux.
Overview
What Cilium does
Cilium provides networking, observability and security for Kubernetes using eBPF, which allows programs to run inside the Linux kernel without kernel modules. That underpinning is the point: traditional Kubernetes networking relies on iptables rules that degrade as service counts grow, and eBPF replaces them with kernel-level programs that scale differently. Beyond being a CNI plugin, Cilium offers identity-based network policy, service mesh capability without sidecars, and Hubble for network observability. It is the default CNI on several managed Kubernetes services.
What people use it for
- Kubernetes networking at a scale where iptables-based CNI performance degrades
- Network policy expressed on workload identity rather than fragile IP rules
- Seeing which services actually talk to each other, and what policy is dropping
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Cilium.
- Requires a recent Linux kernel, which rules out older distributions and some managed environments
- eBPF is genuinely hard to debug when it misbehaves, and the skill is rare on most teams
- Broad scope — CNI, policy, mesh, observability — means the learning curve covers several domains at once
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Cilium
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
Pricing
What Cilium costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Cilium
Free
- Full functionality
- No usage limits
- Community support
Capabilities
Features
eBPF datapath
Kernel-level packet processing instead of iptables rule chains
Identity-based policy
Network policy on workload identity rather than IP addresses
Hubble observability
Flow-level visibility into what is talking to what and what is being dropped
Sidecar-free mesh
Mesh features without a proxy container in every pod
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Is Cilium free?
Yes, open source and CNCF-graduated. Isovalent sells an enterprise distribution and support.
What does eBPF change?
It lets Cilium run packet-processing programs inside the kernel instead of relying on iptables rule chains, which behave poorly as the number of services grows.
Does Cilium replace a service mesh?
It can cover much of what a mesh does without sidecars, though full mesh feature sets still favour Istio or Linkerd.
Keep looking
Where to go from Cilium
- Cilium alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Cilium pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Cilium badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Cloud softwareThe full category
- Best Cloud softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Cloud software for
Compare Cilium with
- Podman
- K3s
- Akamai
- Crossplane
- OpenEBS
- DigitalOcean
- Portworx
- Vault
- Fastly
- HAProxy
- Hetzner Cloud
- Infracost
- Lambda
- Linode
- Northflank
- Oracle Cloud
- Buildah
- Rancher
Other Cloud software
Kubernetes-native storage and data services, priced by the node hour
From $0.33/node hour11 researched notesCloud cost estimates in pull requests, with governance in the paid tier
Free, then $250/mo12 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Cilium, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Cilium
Cilium alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Cilium pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare Cilium
Put it head to head with anything we hold
Cilium badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
Best Cloud software alternatives
Open source distributed block storage for Kubernetes, incubating at the CNCF
Open source, no licence fee
Deployment platform that provisions and operates Kubernetes inside your own cloud account
quoteCloud cost estimates in pull requests, with governance in the paid tier
Free open source tool, then per month by run volume
Free self-hosted platform built on Docker Swarm with a dashboard and automatic certificates
Open source, no licence fee
Open source self-hosted platform that deploys applications and databases to servers you already own
Open source, no licence fee