head to head · open source
cilium vs kubeshark
cilium has 25,360 GitHub stars, 4,082 forks, 1,085 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kubeshark has 12,082 stars, 549 forks, 149 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. cilium leads on adoption by 110% (25,360 vs 12,082 stars). cilium is written in Go under Apache-2.0; kubeshark is written in Go under Apache-2.0. cilium has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, kubeshark 5%. cilium was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ebpf, kubernetes), 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 | kubeshark | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 12K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.1K | ⑂ 549 |
| 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 kubeshark if
- You want the kubeshark feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and kubeshark 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 kubeshark
Kubeshark is an Apache 2.0, eBPF powered network observability tool for Kubernetes that indexes cluster wide L4/L7 traffic with full Kubernetes context and makes that traffic queryable by AI agents through the Model Context Protocol and by humans through a real time dashboard.
read the full kubeshark overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cilium or kubeshark more popular?
cilium has 25,360 GitHub stars and kubeshark has 12,082. cilium has the larger community by that measure.
Are cilium and kubeshark free?
Both are open source. cilium is licensed under Apache-2.0 and kubeshark under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cilium and kubeshark?
cilium is written in Go and kubeshark in Go. 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 kubeshark?
Choose cilium if you want the larger community (25,360 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose kubeshark if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.