head to head · open source
cilium vs Vector
cilium has 25,759 GitHub stars, 4,207 forks, 1,085 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Vector has 22,785 stars, 2,369 forks, 2,512 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cilium leads on adoption by 13% (25,759 vs 22,785 stars). cilium is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Vector is written in Rust under MPL-2.0. cilium has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, Vector 10%. cilium was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (monitoring), 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 | Vector | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 23K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 2.4K |
| 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 Vector if
- You want the Vector feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Vector 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 Vector
Quickstart • Docs • Guides • Integrations • Chat • Download • Container Images • Rust Crate Docs What is Vector? Vector is a high performance, end to end (agent & aggregator) observability data pipeline that puts you in control of your observability data. [Collect][docs.sources], [transform][docs.transforms], and [route][docs.sinks] all your logs and metrics to any vendors you want today and any other vendors you may want tomorrow. Vector enables dramatic cost reduction, novel data enrichment, and data security where you need it, not where it is most convenient for your…
read the full Vector overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cilium or Vector more popular?
cilium has 25,759 GitHub stars and Vector has 22,785. cilium has the larger community by that measure.
Are cilium and Vector free?
Both are open source. cilium is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Vector under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cilium and Vector?
cilium is written in Go and Vector in Rust. 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 Vector?
Choose cilium if you want the larger community (25,759 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Vector if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.