head to head · open source
cilium vs effect
cilium has 25,232 GitHub stars, 4,071 forks, 1,085 open issues and last shipped yesterday. effect has 16,097 stars, 747 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cilium leads on adoption by 57% (25,232 vs 16,097 stars). cilium is written in Go under Apache-2.0; effect is written in TypeScript under MIT. cilium has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, effect 5%. effect 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 | effect | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 16K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.1K | ⑂ 747 |
| 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 effect if
- You want the effect feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and effect 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 effect
Effect is a TypeScript library for building robust, maintainable, type safe, and production grade applications. It lives in the TypeScript and JavaScript ecosystem, distributed as the core effect package alongside a monorepo of integration packages that extend it. The project is MIT licensed, has been developed for roughly seven years, and currently ships Effect V4 as a release candidate, with the main branch holding v4 development and the v3 branch retaining the previous line.
read the full effect overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cilium or effect more popular?
cilium has 25,232 GitHub stars and effect has 16,097. cilium has the larger community by that measure.
Are cilium and effect free?
Both are open source. cilium is licensed under Apache-2.0 and effect under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cilium and effect?
cilium is written in Go and effect 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 effect?
Choose cilium if you want the larger community (25,232 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose effect if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.