head to head · open source
cilium vs telegraf
cilium has 25,759 GitHub stars, 4,207 forks, 1,085 open issues and last shipped yesterday. telegraf has 17,893 stars, 5,846 forks, 449 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cilium leads on adoption by 44% (25,759 vs 17,893 stars). cilium is written in Go under Apache-2.0; telegraf is written in Go under MIT. cilium has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, telegraf 33%. 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 | telegraf | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 18K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 5.8K |
| 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 telegraf if
- You want the telegraf feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and telegraf 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 telegraf
Telegraf Telegraf is an agent for collecting, processing, aggregating, and writing metrics, logs, and other arbitrary data. Offers a comprehensive suite of over 300 plugins, covering a wide range of functionalities including system monitoring, cloud services, and message passing Enables the integration of user defined code to collect, transform, and transmit data efficiently Compiles into a standalone static binary without any external dependencies, ensuring a streamlined deployment process Utilizes TOML for configuration, providing a user friendly and unambiguous setup experience Developed with contributions…
read the full telegraf overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cilium or telegraf more popular?
cilium has 25,759 GitHub stars and telegraf has 17,893. cilium has the larger community by that measure.
Are cilium and telegraf free?
Both are open source. cilium is licensed under Apache-2.0 and telegraf under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cilium and telegraf?
cilium is written in Go and telegraf 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 telegraf?
Choose cilium if you want the larger community (25,759 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose telegraf if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.