Cilium vs Tailscale

Cilium is an open-source, cloud-native system for providing, securing, and observing network connectivity between workloads using eBPF. Its networking capabilities include CNI, Layer 4 load balancing, Cluster Mesh, kube-proxy replacement, BGP, service mesh, Gateway API, IPv6, host firewall, and ingress. Network policies can enforce identity-aware rules from L3 through L7, including DNS- and HTTP-aware filtering. Security features include runtime protection and transparent encryption of managed host and endpoint traffic using IPsec, WireGuard, or ztunnel; ztunnel support is marked beta. For visibility, Cilium lists service maps, metrics and tracing export, network flow logs, and protocol visibility. Hubble, built on Cilium and eBPF, provides visibility into service communication and behavior. Documentation describes Prometheus and Grafana integrations and Kubernetes support for services including GKE, AKS, EKS, OpenShift, RKE, k3s, and Alibaba ACK. Its container image requires AMD64 or AArch64 hosts running Linux kernel 5.10 or later, or an equivalent kernel such as 4.18 on RHEL 8.10. For environments above 500 nodes, the quick installation guide directs readers to large-environment guidance or specific datapath modes.

Tailscale is a zero-config VPN for connecting users and devices across a network. It uses WireGuard to form low-latency peer-to-peer connections, which Tailscale says are end-to-end encrypted so it cannot read users’ traffic. Administrators can use access control lists to specify which users may connect to which devices. Supported identity providers handle authentication, and SCIM supports user and group provisioning. Monitoring features include configuration audit logs, network flow logs, webhooks, and log streaming to SIEM partners. Device posture information can be used in connectivity rules. Taildrop transfers files between devices, while node sharing lets users share a node without exposing it to the public internet. The service runs on Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, web, and Windows. Personal is free forever for non-commercial use and supports up to six users; Standard costs $8 per user per month. Premium costs $18 per user per month and includes priority support.