head to head · open source
cilium vs Apache SkyWalking
cilium has 25,232 GitHub stars, 4,071 forks, 1,085 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Apache SkyWalking has 24,955 stars, 6,634 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cilium leads on adoption by 1% (25,232 vs 24,955 stars). cilium is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Apache SkyWalking is written in Java under Apache-2.0. cilium has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, Apache SkyWalking 27%. cilium was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ebpf), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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 | Apache SkyWalking | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 25K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.1K | ⑂ 6.6K |
| 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 Apache SkyWalking if
- You want the Apache SkyWalking feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and Apache SkyWalking 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 Apache SkyWalking
Apache SkyWalking is an open source application performance monitoring (APM) system for distributed systems in cloud native architectures, built for teams that run microservices across Kubernetes and container based environments.
read the full Apache SkyWalking overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cilium or Apache SkyWalking more popular?
cilium has 25,232 GitHub stars and Apache SkyWalking has 24,955. cilium has the larger community by that measure.
Are cilium and Apache SkyWalking free?
Both are open source. cilium is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Apache SkyWalking under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cilium and Apache SkyWalking?
cilium is written in Go and Apache SkyWalking in Java. 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 Apache SkyWalking?
Choose cilium if you want the larger community (25,232 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Apache SkyWalking if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.