head to head · open source
cilium vs Checkmate
cilium has 25,360 GitHub stars, 4,082 forks, 1,085 open issues and last shipped today. Checkmate has 10,857 stars, 1,206 forks, 114 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cilium leads on adoption by 134% (25,360 vs 10,857 stars). cilium is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Checkmate is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. cilium has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, Checkmate 11%. cilium was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| cilium | Checkmate | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 11K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.1K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cilium if
- You weight community size — 25K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Checkmate if
- You want the Checkmate feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Checkmate fits your workflow better
About cilium
Cilium is a networking, observability, and security solution built on an eBPF based dataplane, written in Go and licensed under Apache 2.0. It lives in the Kubernetes ecosystem as a CNI implementation, and it is a CNCF project. At its foundation is eBPF, a Linux kernel technology that allows dynamic insertion of bytecode at integration points such as network IO, application sockets, and tracepoints, which is where Cilium implements its networking, security, and visibility logic. The project provides a flat Layer 3 network that can span multiple clusters in either native routing or overlay mode, and it is L7 proto…
read the full cilium overview →
About Checkmate
Checkmate is an open source, self hosted monitoring application for infrastructure and observability. It is written in TypeScript and released under the AGPL 3.0 license. The repository contains the frontend and backend, and the project sits in the infrastructure monitoring ecosystem for teams that need to track servers, websites, and hardware status without relying on a hosted only product.
read the full Checkmate overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cilium or Checkmate more popular?
cilium has 25,360 GitHub stars and Checkmate has 10,857. cilium has the larger community by that measure.
Are cilium and Checkmate free?
Both are open source. cilium is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Checkmate under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cilium and Checkmate?
cilium is written in Go and Checkmate in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, cilium or Checkmate?
Choose cilium if you want the larger community (25,360 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Checkmate if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.