AWS App Mesh vs Flomesh Service Mesh
AWS App Mesh
aws.amazon.comFlomesh Service Mesh
flomesh.ioSide by side
| Figure | AWS App Mesh | Flomesh Service Mesh |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 1 |
| Spec score · Service Mesh Platforms | 9.1 (#1) | 8.0 (#5) |
| Observability | App Mesh collects service metrics, logs and traces and integrates with Amazon CloudWatch and AWS X-Ray. | The documentation lists Prometheus and Grafana integrations as stable and distributed tracing with Jaeger as beta. |
| Proxy | App Mesh uses the open source Envoy proxy to manage traffic into and out of service containers. | FSM uses the Flomesh Pipy proxy and automatically injects it as a sidecar into onboarded applications. |
| Purpose | AWS App Mesh provides visibility and network traffic controls for service-to-service communication. | FSM provides traffic management and service governance for microservices running on Kubernetes. |
| Security | AWS App Mesh API clients must support TLS 1.2, and AWS recommends TLS 1.3. | FSM enables mutual TLS for service-to-service communication and fine-grained service access policies. |
Plans
In their own words
AWS App Mesh
AWS App Mesh is a managed service for visibility and traffic control between services. It uses the open source Envoy proxy to handle traffic into and out of service containers, and can change routes between services without application-code changes. Proxies balance client traffic and adjust endpoints using health checks and service registration. App Mesh provides metrics and logs for service hops, and can collect traces to help visualize service API calls. It works with AWS Fargate, Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS, Amazon EC2 and Kubernetes on EC2. Mutual TLS verifies service identities using certificates from AWS Certificate Manager Private Certificate Authority or a customer-managed certificate authority. Listed integrations include Amazon CloudWatch and AWS X-Ray, plus tools such as Datadog, HashiCorp and Sysdig. There is no additional charge for App Mesh itself, but proxy-consumed AWS resources are billed separately. AWS states support ends on September 30, 2026; after that, the console and App Mesh resources will no longer be accessible. API clients must support TLS 1.2; AWS recommends TLS 1.3.
Flomesh Service Mesh
Flomesh Service Mesh (FSM) provides traffic management and service governance for microservices running on Kubernetes. It uses the Flomesh Pipy proxy, which is automatically added as a sidecar to onboarded applications. FSM supports traffic shifting, ingress and egress, and Kubernetes Gateway API capabilities, along with HTTP, TCP, gRPC and MQTT traffic. For service security, it enables mutual TLS and fine-grained access policies. Certificate management can use Tresor, cert-manager or HashiCorp Vault. Documentation marks Prometheus and Grafana integrations as stable and Jaeger distributed tracing as beta; integration guides also cover Dapr and discovery registries such as Consul, Eureka and Nacos. FSM supports x86 and ARM architectures and multi-cluster Kubernetes connectivity through the MCS API, though multicluster is marked alpha. It is open source, free and self-hosted, with Kubernetes and OpenShift listed. Installation requires Kubernetes 1.19 or later; version 1.1 is listed for Kubernetes 1.19 through 1.24.