Grafana vs. Cilium

Grafana Labs provides an open and composable observability stack built around Grafana, the leading open source technology for dashboards and visualization. Recognized as a 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ Leader for Observability Platforms and positioned furthest to the right for Completeness of Vision, Grafana Labs supports over 25M users and 5,000+ customers. Grafana Cloud is Grafana Labs’ fully managed observability platform designed for scale, intelligence, and efficiency. Built on the open-source LGTM Stack—Loki for logs, Grafana for visualization, Tempo for traces, and Mimir for metrics—it delivers a complete, composable observability experience without operational overhead. Grafana Cloud leverages machine learning and intelligent data management to help teams optimize performance and control costs. Features like Adaptive Metrics and cardinality management automatically aggregate high-volume telemetry data for precision insights at a fraction of the cost. With AI-driven alerting and incident correlation, teams can detect anomalies faster, reduce alert fatigue, and focus on what matters most—system reliability and user experience. Grafana Cloud supports OLAP-style analysis through integrations with analytical databases and data warehouses, allowing teams to visualize and correlate multi-dimensional datasets alongside observability data. Seamlessly integrated with OpenTelemetry and hundreds of data sources, Grafana Cloud provides a single pane of glass for monitoring applications, infrastructure, and digital experiences across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Backed by Grafana Labs’ global expertise and trusted by 5,000+ customers, it empowers organizations to achieve observability at scale—open, intelligent, and future-ready.

Cilium is a cutting-edge open-source solution aimed at improving, securing, and monitoring network communications within container workloads and cloud-native setups, harnessing the innovative Kernel technology referred to as eBPF. In contrast to conventional configurations, Kubernetes lacks an inherent Load Balancing mechanism, which is typically managed by cloud providers or the networking teams handling private cloud environments. Cilium effectively oversees incoming traffic by employing BGP while utilizing XDP and eBPF to enhance overall performance. The integration of these technologies results in a robust and secure load balancing system. Operating directly at the kernel level, Cilium paired with eBPF facilitates informed connectivity decisions for various workloads, whether they exist on the same node or are distributed across multiple clusters. By utilizing eBPF and XDP, Cilium not only boosts latency and performance but also eliminates the necessity for Kube-proxy, making operations more efficient and optimizing resource allocation. This transformation not only simplifies the network architecture but also allows developers to dedicate more attention to application development instead of being bogged down by infrastructure issues, ultimately fostering innovation and productivity. As a result, Cilium stands out as an essential tool for modern cloud-native environments.