Calico Open Source vs Skupper
Calico Open Source
tigera.ioSkupper
skupper.ioSide by side
| Figure | Calico Open Source | Skupper |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Container Networking Software | 8.0 (#5) | 7.1 (#19) |
| Support | The editions comparison describes Calico Open Source support and maintenance as community-driven. | The project directs users to its Google Groups mailing list for questions and GitHub issues for bugs and enhancement requests. |
Plans
In their own words
Calico Open Source
Calico Open Source provides networking, network security, and observability for Kubernetes across multi-cloud, hybrid-cloud, and on-premises environments. It supports container, virtual machine, and bare-metal workloads with a shared security policy framework. The policy engine implements Kubernetes network policy features including AdminNetworkPolicy and BaselineAdminNetworkPolicy. Policies can use tiers, deny and log actions, NetworkSets, and cluster-wide global rules; Staged Policies allow teams to assess behavior before applying enforcement. Listed data planes include eBPF, iptables, nftables, Windows, and VPP. Whisker provides a visual way to view flow logs and analyze network communication. Calico can also manage WireGuard tunnels to encrypt pod traffic between Kubernetes nodes. Calico Ingress Gateway provides traffic control, load balancing, and ingress policy enforcement. The free plan includes unlimited clusters, with in-memory data retention and community-driven support and maintenance. Tigera describes deployments ranging from 10 to 10,000 or more nodes.