Cilium is an open-source eBPF-based networking, observability, and security platform for Kubernetes and cloud-native environments.
Pricing
Free (open source)
Reviews
2,500+
Founded
2016
Team Size
51-200 employees
Current Deal
Free and open source
About Cilium
Cilium is a CNCF graduated project that uses eBPF technology to provide high-performance networking, security, and observability for Kubernetes. It replaces kube-proxy and traditional CNI plugins with eBPF programs running in the Linux kernel.
Networking features include pod networking, load balancing, bandwidth management, and multi-cluster connectivity (Cluster Mesh). Service mesh capabilities are provided without sidecars through eBPF.
Cilium Network Policy supports L3/L4 and L7 policies with identity-based security. Hubble provides deep network observability with flow logs, metrics, and a service dependency map.
Cilium has become the default CNI for Google Kubernetes Engine and is widely adopted for its performance advantages over iptables-based networking solutions.
Pricing
Free (open source)
Open Source: Free (Apache 2.0)
Isovalent Enterprise: Custom pricing for enterprise features
Google GKE Dataplane V2 uses Cilium.