AWS App Mesh
Managed service mesh that simplifies monitoring and controlling inter-service communication in microservices
Open-Source Projects
Discover top open-source software, updated regularly with real-world adoption signals.
Discover top open-source software, updated regularly with real-world adoption signals.
Lightweight, security-first service mesh for Kubernetes workloads
Linkerd provides an ultralight, security-first service mesh that adds observability, reliability, and zero-code-change security to any modern Kubernetes cluster in production.
Linkerd is a lightweight, security‑first service mesh designed for Kubernetes. It injects a tiny sidecar proxy into each pod, automatically enabling mutual TLS, detailed metrics, and tracing without requiring any changes to application code.
Ideal for developers, DevOps teams, and enterprises that need strong security and observability while keeping resource overhead low. Installation is a single command on any modern Kubernetes cluster, and the mesh integrates natively with the Kubernetes API, making it a natural fit for cloud‑native environments.
Linkerd delivers built‑in observability (metrics, distributed tracing, tap), automatic certificate management, and simple traffic splitting for canary releases. The data‑plane proxy, written in Rust, ensures minimal latency. Deployments are managed via the Linkerd CLI and Helm charts, with a lightweight web dashboard for real‑time monitoring.
When teams consider Linkerd, these hosted platforms usually appear on the same shortlist.
Managed service mesh that simplifies monitoring and controlling inter-service communication in microservices
Fully managed service mesh on Google Cloud for traffic management and observability
Enterprise service mesh management platform extending Istio across multi-cloud environments
Looking for a hosted option? These are the services engineering teams benchmark against before choosing open source.
Secure inter-service communication
Automatic mutual TLS encrypts all pod-to-pod traffic without code changes.
Observability for microservices
Provides real-time metrics, distributed tracing, and tap functionality to diagnose latency and errors.
Gradual rollout of a new version
Leverages lightweight traffic splitting to perform canary deployments with minimal overhead.
Compliance-driven environments
Enforces strict security policies and audit logs to meet regulatory requirements.
No, it operates as a transparent sidecar proxy injected into pods, so applications run unchanged.
Linkerd supports all currently maintained Kubernetes releases; see the Getting Started guide for exact version matrix.
It automatically issues and rotates certificates, establishing mutual TLS between all meshed services.
Linkerd includes a lightweight web dashboard that visualizes metrics and service topology.
While the core proxy is not plugin-based, you can integrate external tools via its APIs and telemetry hooks.
Project at a glance
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