Fluent Bit vs Telegraf
Fluent Bit
fluentbit.ioTelegraf
influxdata.comSide by side
| Figure | Fluent Bit | Telegraf |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $1,500/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 4 |
| Spec score · Telemetry Pipeline Software | 8.1 (#13) | 8.7 (#3) |
| Deployment | It can run as an edge agent or as a central aggregator or collector. | Telegraf Controller is self-hosted as a single binary and runs on macOS, Linux, and Windows. |
| License | Fluent Bit, its core, plugins, and tools are distributed under the Apache License 2.0. | The Telegraf repository and license file identify the software as MIT licensed. |
| Purpose | Fluent Bit is an open-source telemetry agent for collecting and processing telemetry across constrained systems and cloud infrastructures. | Telegraf is an open source agent for collecting metrics from infrastructure, applications, and devices. |
| Security | Fluent Bit has integrated TLS and SSL support for network input and output plugins. | The maker says open source Telegraf has no native access control; Enterprise adds RBAC, API tokens, and TLS support. |
Plans
Telegraf
- Telegraf (open source)Free
- Telegraf OSSFree
- Telegraf Enterprise$18,000 a year
- Telegraf Enterprise$18,000 a year
In their own words
Fluent Bit
Fluent Bit is a free, open-source telemetry agent for collecting and processing logs, metrics, and traces. It can run as an edge agent on constrained systems or as a central collector for cloud infrastructure, and is designed for high throughput with low resource consumption. Built-in parsers cover JSON, Regex, LTSV, and Logfmt; metrics compatibility includes Prometheus and OpenTelemetry. More than 100 built-in plugins cover inputs, filters, analytics, and outputs, with destinations including Splunk, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, and Kafka. Buffering in memory or on the file system and backpressure handling support data flow, while network input and output plugins include TLS and SSL. Stream processing supports SQL queries, aggregation windows, forecasting, and data analysis. Users can write plugins in C, Lua, Golang, or WebAssembly. The Open-source Fluent Bit plan costs nothing, with self-hosted deployment under the Apache License 2.0. Official packages and installation guidance cover Linux, macOS, Windows, containers, and selected BSD and IBM Z Linux environments.