head to head · open source
cilium vs Logstash
cilium has 25,768 GitHub stars, 4,210 forks, 1,085 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Logstash has 14,971 stars, 3,503 forks, 2,254 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cilium leads on adoption by 72% (25,768 vs 14,971 stars). cilium is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Logstash is written in Java under a custom or non-standard licence. cilium has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, Logstash 23%. Logstash 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 | Logstash | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 15K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 3.5K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cilium if
- You weight community size — 26K 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 Logstash if
- You want the Logstash feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and Logstash fits your workflow better
About cilium
.. raw:: html Cilium is a networking, observability, and security solution with an eBPF based dataplane. It provides a simple flat Layer 3 network with the ability to span multiple clusters in either a native routing or overlay mode. It is L7 protocol aware and can enforce network policies on L3 L7 using an identity based security model that is decoupled from network addressing. Cilium implements distributed load balancing for traffic between pods and to external services, and is able to fully replace kube proxy, using efficient hash tables in eBPF, allowing for almost unlimited scale. It also supports advanced…
read the full cilium overview →
About Logstash
Logstash Logstash is part of the Elastic Stack along with Beats, Elasticsearch and Kibana. Logstash is a server side data processing pipeline that ingests data from a multitude of sources simultaneously, transforms it, and then sends it to your favorite "stash." (Ours is Elasticsearch, naturally.). Logstash has over 200 plugins, and you can write your own very easily as well. For more info, see Documentation and Getting Started You can find the documentation and getting started guides for Logstash on the elastic.co site For information about building the documentation, see the README in Downloads You can…
read the full Logstash overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cilium or Logstash more popular?
cilium has 25,768 GitHub stars and Logstash has 14,971. cilium has the larger community by that measure.
Are cilium and Logstash free?
Both are open source. cilium is licensed under Apache-2.0, and Logstash has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between cilium and Logstash?
cilium is written in Go and Logstash 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 Logstash?
Choose cilium if you want the larger community (25,768 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Logstash if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.