DeepFlow vs Kerno
DeepFlow
deepflow.ioKerno
github.comSide by side
| Figure | DeepFlow | Kerno |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 0 |
| Spec score · eBPF Observability Tools | 8.1 (#8) | 7.0 (#25) |
| Deployment | The documentation provides Kubernetes and Docker Compose deployment methods for an all-in-one installation. | Kerno can run as a Kubernetes DaemonSet or as a binary on bare metal, VMs, EC2, and GCE; Docker images are published for Linux amd64 and arm64. |
| Integrations | DeepFlow can serve as a storage backend for Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, SkyWalking, and Pyroscope, and provides SQL, PromQL, and OTLP interfaces. | The project lists Prometheus metrics and ServiceMonitor support, Kubernetes pod enrichment, optional Anthropic, OpenAI, and Ollama providers, and systemd enrichment. |
| Purpose | DeepFlow is an observability product for complex cloud infrastructure and cloud-native applications. | Kerno is an eBPF-based incident diagnosis engine for production issues across Linux, Kubernetes, VMs, and bare metal. |
Plans
DeepFlow
- Community EditionFree
- Cloud EditionPriced on request
- Enterprise EditionPriced on request
In their own words
DeepFlow
DeepFlow is an observability product for cloud infrastructure and cloud-native applications. It uses eBPF to collect application performance metrics, distributed traces, and continuous profiling data without intrusion. Its core capabilities include a universal service map, distributed tracing, and profiling. Built-in parsing covers HTTP, HTTPS, Dubbo, gRPC, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, MongoDB, Kafka, MQTT, and DNS. DeepFlow can serve as storage for Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, SkyWalking, and Pyroscope, and offers SQL, PromQL, and OTLP interfaces. AutoTagging links observability data with cloud and Kubernetes resources, tags, and CMDB business tags. The Community Edition is open source under Apache 2.0 and is listed at free. It supports Linux servers and selected Kubernetes, cloud, and container environments; deployment guidance covers Kubernetes and Docker Compose. Enterprise Edition adds encrypted agent-to-server transmission, multi-tenancy, and data permission isolation. The listed platforms include Android, API, Linux, self-hosted, web, and Windows.