head to head · open source
cilium vs hertzbeat
cilium has 25,768 GitHub stars, 4,210 forks, 1,085 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hertzbeat has 7,452 stars, 1,368 forks, 313 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. cilium leads on adoption by 246% (25,768 vs 7,452 stars). cilium is written in Go under Apache-2.0; hertzbeat is written in Java under Apache-2.0. cilium has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, hertzbeat 18%. 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 | hertzbeat | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 7.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 hertzbeat if
- You want the hertzbeat feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and hertzbeat 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 hertzbeat
Readme : English 中文 日本語 Home: hertzbeat.apache.org Email: Mail to dev subscribe@hertzbeat.apache.org to subscribe mailing lists 🎡 Introduction Apache HertzBeat™ is an AI powered next generation open source real time observability system. Unified metrics and logs collection, centralized alerting distribution, intelligent management and analysis. No Agent required, high performance cluster, provides powerful custom monitoring and status page building capabilities. Features Integrates collection + analysis + alerting + notification into one platform, with new AI powered interactions and features under HertzBeat…
read the full hertzbeat overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cilium or hertzbeat more popular?
cilium has 25,768 GitHub stars and hertzbeat has 7,452. cilium has the larger community by that measure.
Are cilium and hertzbeat free?
Both are open source. cilium is licensed under Apache-2.0 and hertzbeat under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cilium and hertzbeat?
cilium is written in Go and hertzbeat 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 hertzbeat?
Choose cilium if you want the larger community (25,768 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose hertzbeat if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.