Google Cloud Load Balancing vs kube-vip
Google Cloud Load Balancing
cloud.google.com
kube-vip
kube-vip.ioSide by side
| Figure | Google Cloud Load Balancing | kube-vip |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | — |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Load Balancing Software | 7.2 (#11) | 6.9 (#15) |
| Purpose | Cloud Load Balancing is a fully managed service that distributes traffic across apps for performance and resilience, scaling from zero to millions of users. | kube-vip provides a virtual IP and load balancer for Kubernetes control planes and Services of type LoadBalancer. |
| Support | Google Cloud support packages can include 24/7 coverage, phone support, and access to a technical support manager; community help is also available through Stack Overflow and Google Cloud Slack. | The project README directs users to raise issues on its GitHub repository and consult the documentation. |
Plans
In their own words
Google Cloud Load Balancing
Google Cloud Load Balancing has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
kube-vip
kube-vip is free, open-source software that gives Kubernetes clusters a virtual IP and load balancing for control-plane traffic and LoadBalancer Services. It targets Linux, self-hosted deployments such as bare metal, on-premises systems, virtualization, and edge devices including ARM hardware and Raspberry Pi. Virtual IPs may be IPv4, IPv6, or DNS names. Networking modes are ARP, BGP, routing tables, and WireGuard; the documented modes are disjunctive, so only one can be enabled at a time. kube-vip can run as a static Pod or DaemonSet inside the cluster it serves. Control-plane options include leader election, kubeadm static Pods, and K3s or other distribution DaemonSets. Service support includes BGP across nodes, address pools, CIDR or ranges, DHCP, and UPnP. It uses Apache-2.0 licensing and provides Layer 4 routing, not Layer 7 routing.