head to head · open source
cilium vs kubeshark
cilium has 25,768 GitHub stars, 4,210 forks, 1,085 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kubeshark has 12,127 stars, 558 forks, 149 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. cilium leads on adoption by 112% (25,768 vs 12,127 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 | ★ 26K | ★ 12K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 558 |
| 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 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
.. 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 kubeshark
Network Observability for SREs & AI Agents Live Demo · Docs Kubeshark indexes cluster wide network traffic at the kernel level using eBPF — delivering instant answers to any query using network, API, and Kubernetes semantics. What you can do: Download Retrospective PCAPs — cluster wide packet captures filtered by nodes, time, workloads, and IPs. Store PCAPs for long term retention and later investigation. Visualize Network Data — explore traffic matching queries with API, Kubernetes, or network semantics through a real time dashboard. See Encrypted Traffic in Plain Text — automatically decrypt TLS/mTLS traffic…
read the full kubeshark overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cilium or kubeshark more popular?
cilium has 25,768 GitHub stars and kubeshark has 12,127. 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 (25,768 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.