head to head · open source
cilium vs metrics
cilium has 25,296 GitHub stars, 4,075 forks, 1,085 open issues and last shipped today. metrics has 17,202 stars, 2,276 forks, 68 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. cilium leads on adoption by 47% (25,296 vs 17,202 stars). cilium is written in Go under Apache-2.0; metrics is written in JavaScript under MIT. cilium has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, metrics 13%. 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 | metrics | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 17K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-05-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.1K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| 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 metrics if
- You want the metrics feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and metrics 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 metrics
Metrics is an infographics generator for GitHub accounts, published under the MIT license and written in JavaScript. It lives in the GitHub ecosystem as a GitHub Action and as a hosted web service, and it produces statistics about a user, an organization, or a repository. The output is rendered as SVG, Markdown, PDF, or JSON, which means the same generated figures can be embedded in a profile readme, attached to a blog post, or consumed by another tool.
read the full metrics overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cilium or metrics more popular?
cilium has 25,296 GitHub stars and metrics has 17,202. cilium has the larger community by that measure.
Are cilium and metrics free?
Both are open source. cilium is licensed under Apache-2.0 and metrics under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cilium and metrics?
cilium is written in Go and metrics in JavaScript. 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 metrics?
Choose cilium if you want the larger community (25,296 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose metrics if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.