Open source cncf projects

Every project in the registry tagged cncf, ranked by real GitHub adoption.

projects 21 combined stars ★ 409K refresh nightly
01 kubernetes ★ 129K

Production-Grade Container Scheduling and Management

last push13 hours ago languageGo licenseApache-2.0
02 NetData ★ 81K

Real-time monitoring for systems and applications

last push13 hours ago languageGo licenseGPL-3.0
03 etcd ★ 52K

Distributed reliable key-value store for the most critical data of a distributed system

last push15 hours ago languageGo licenseApache-2.0
04 cilium ★ 26K

eBPF-based Networking, Security, and Observability

last push12 hours ago languageGo licenseApache-2.0
05 jaeger ★ 23K

CNCF Jaeger, a Distributed Tracing Platform

last push13 hours ago languageGo licenseApache-2.0
06 coredns ★ 14K

CoreDNS is a DNS server that chains plugins

last push32 hours ago languageGo licenseApache-2.0
07 thanos ★ 14K

Highly available Prometheus setup with long term storage capabilities. A CNCF Incubating project.

last push4 days ago languageGo licenseApache-2.0
08 crossplane ★ 12K

The Cloud Native Control Plane

last push17 hours ago languageGo licenseApache-2.0
09 meshery ★ 12K

Meshery, the cloud native manager

last push13 hours ago languageTypeScript licenseApache-2.0
10 kubevela ★ 7.9K

The Modern Application Platform.

last push3 days ago languageGo licenseApache-2.0
11 opencost ★ 6.8K

Cost monitoring for Kubernetes workloads and cloud costs

last push4 days ago languageGo licenseApache-2.0
12 bfe ★ 6.3K

A modern layer 7 load balancer from baidu

last push22 hours ago languageGo licenseApache-2.0
13 cortex ★ 5.9K

A horizontally scalable, highly available, multi-tenant, long term Prometheus.

last push4 days ago languageGo licenseApache-2.0
14 cubefs ★ 5.7K

cloud-native distributed storage

last push12 days ago languageGo licenseApache-2.0
15 gateway ★ 3.1K

Manages Envoy Proxy as a Standalone or Kubernetes-based Application Gateway

last push25 hours ago languageGo licenseApache-2.0
16 microcks ★ 2.1K

The open source, cloud native tool for API Mocking and Testing. Microcks is a Cloud Native Computing Foundation incubating project 🚀

last push17 hours ago languageJava licenseApache-2.0
17 openchoreo ★ 1.8K

OpenChoreo is an internal developer platform for Kubernetes

last push20 hours ago languageGo licenseApache-2.0
18 copacetic ★ 1.7K

🧵 CLI tool for directly patching container images!

last push8 days ago languageGo licenseApache-2.0
19 pipecd ★ 1.4K

The One CD for All {applications, platforms, operations}

last push17 hours ago languageGo licenseApache-2.0
20 layer5 ★ 1.1K

Layer5, expect more from your infrastructure

last push17 hours ago languageJavaScript licenseApache-2.0
21 eraser ★ 627

🧹 Cleaning up images from Kubernetes nodes

last push4 days ago languageGo licenseApache-2.0

Related tags

← all tags

Frequently asked questions

How many open source cncf projects are there?

This registry tracks 21 projects tagged cncf, with 409,070 GitHub stars between them. The most-adopted is kubernetes at 128,842 stars.

Are these cncf projects free to use?

Yes — 21 of the 21 carry an explicit open-source licence across 2 distinct licences, so there is no licence fee. Where a project also sells a hosted or enterprise version, the self-hosted path remains free.

Which cncf project should I choose?

The list above is ranked by GitHub stars, but stars measure attention rather than fit. Check three things on each card: the licence (permissive versus copyleft), the language it is written in, and the last-push date — a high-star project that has not been pushed in a year is a liability.

Are these cncf projects still maintained?

21 of the 21 were pushed in the last 90 days, and every card shows its exact last-push date so you can see the rest. Sort your shortlist by that date before committing to a migration.