Calico Enterprise vs Cello CNI
Calico Enterprise
tigera.ioCello CNI
github.comSide by side
| Figure | Calico Enterprise | Cello CNI |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Container Networking Software | 7.5 (#13) | 7.9 (#6) |
| Purpose | Calico Enterprise is a self-managed platform for unified network security and observability in Kubernetes clusters. | Cello is a Kubernetes CNI plugin based on the Volcengine VPC network that lets cluster workloads communicate within the VPC. |
| Support | The pricing page lists enterprise support for Calico Enterprise, and the comparison page identifies its support and maintenance as Standard/Business. | The project directs questions and contributions to GitHub issues or pull requests and also mentions maintainer email and a Feishu group. |
Plans
In their own words
Calico Enterprise
Calico Enterprise is a self-managed platform for network security and observability in Kubernetes clusters. It provides pod-to-pod networking within single clusters and across multiple clusters, with data-plane options including eBPF, nftables, iptables, Windows, and VPP. Cluster mesh connects clusters for pod communication and service discovery, while supporting policy enforcement and traffic visibility. Security controls include network- and application-layer policies, DNS policies, egress controls, and workload microsegmentation. It also provides workload-level IDS/IPS, a workload-focused WAF, and DDoS detection and prevention. For observability, Calico combines flow logs with Kubernetes context and offers network topology views, dashboards, alerts, and workload packet capture. Tigera lists support for PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2, NIST, CCPA, and custom compliance frameworks, along with continuous monitoring and audit-ready reports. Policy deployment can integrate with CI/CD tools such as ArgoCD and Jenkins. The product supports hybrid deployment and centralized control, with BGP, IP-in-IP, VXLAN, WireGuard, TCP, UDP, SCTP, ICMP, ICMPv6, and HTTP listed as supported protocols.