Software Alternatives & Reviews

linkerd VS Istio

Compare linkerd VS Istio and see what are their differences

linkerd logo linkerd

Linkerd is an ultralight service mesh for Kubernetes. It gives you observability, reliability, and security without requiring any code changes.

Istio logo Istio

Open platform to connect, manage, and secure microservices
  • linkerd Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-18
  • Istio Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-01

linkerd videos

Introduction to Linkerd for beginners | a Service Mesh

More videos:

  • Review - Deep Dive: Linkerd - Oliver Gould, Buoyant
  • Review - 60 seconds to a Linkerd service mesh on AKS | Azure Friday

Istio videos

Istio Service Mesh Explained

More videos:

  • Review - What is Istio?
  • Review - Module 1: Istio - Kubernetes - Getting Started - Installation and Sample Application Review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to linkerd and Istio)
Web Servers
43 43%
57% 57
Developer Tools
20 20%
80% 80
Web And Application Servers
API Tools
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using linkerd and Istio. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Istio should be more popular than linkerd. It has been mentiond 45 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

linkerd mentions (15)

  • Optimal JMX Exposure Strategy for Kubernetes Multi-Node Architecture
    Leverage a service mesh like Istio or Linkerd to manage communication between microservices within the Kubernetes cluster. These service meshes can be configured to intercept JMX traffic and enforce access control policies. Benefits:. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Ultimate EKS Baseline Cluster: Part 1 - Provision EKS
    From here, we can explore other developments and tutorials on Kubernetes, such as o11y or observability (PLG, ELK, ELF, TICK, Jaeger, Pyroscope), service mesh (Linkerd, Istio, NSM, Consul Connect, Cillium), and progressive delivery (ArgoCD, FluxCD, Spinnaker). - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Istio moved to CNCF Graduation stage
    Https://linkerd.io/ is a much lighter-weight alternative but you do still get some of the fancy things like mtls without needing any manual configuration. Install it, label your namespaces, and let it do it's thing! - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • API release strategies with API Gateway
    Open source API Gateway (Apache APISIX and Traefik), Service Mesh (Istio and Linkerd) solutions are capable of doing traffic splitting and implementing functionalities like Canary Release and Blue-Green deployment. With canary testing, you can make a critical examination of a new release of an API by selecting only a small portion of your user base. We will cover the canary release next section. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • GKE with Consul Service Mesh
    I have experimented with other service meshes and I was able to get up to speed quickly: Linkerd = 1 day, Istio = 3 days, NGINX Service Mesh = 5 days, but Consul Connect service mesh took at least 11 days to get off the ground. This is by far the most complex solution available. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
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Istio mentions (45)

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What are some alternatives?

When comparing linkerd and Istio, you can also consider the following products

Eureka - Eureka is a contact center and enterprise performance through speech analytics that immediately reveals insights from automated analysis of communications including calls, chat, email, texts, social media, surveys and more.

nginx - A high performance free open source web server powering busiest sites on the Internet.

Docker Hub - Docker Hub is a cloud-based registry service

Zuul - Zuul is a program that drives continuous integration, delivery, and deployment systems with a focus...

Apache Thrift - An interface definition language and communication protocol for creating cross-language services.

Kubernetes - Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers