| description | The production grade telemetry ecosystem |
|---|
Telemetry data processing can be complex, especially at scale. That's why Fluentd was created. Fluentd is more than a basic tool. It's grown into a full-scale ecosystem that contains SDKs for different languages and sub-projects, like Fluent Bit.
The Fluentd and Fluent Bit projects are both:
- Licensed under the terms of Apache License v2.0.
- Graduated hosted projects by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).
- Production-grade solutions, with Fluent Bit deployed over 15 billion times globally.
- Vendor neutral and community driven.
- Widely adopted by the industry, being trusted by major companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and hundreds of others.
The projects have many similarities: Fluent Bit is designed and built on top of the best ideas of Fluentd architecture and general design. Which one you choose depends on your end-users' needs.
The following table describes a comparison of different areas of the projects:
| Attribute | Fluentd | Fluent Bit |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Containers / Servers | Embedded Linux / Containers / Servers |
| Language | C and Ruby | C |
| Memory | Greater than 60 MB | Approximately 450 KB |
| Performance | Medium Performance | High Performance |
| Dependencies | Built as a Ruby Gem, depends on other gems. | Zero dependencies, unless required by a plugin. |
| Plugins | Over 1,000 external plugins available. | Over 100 built-in plugins available. |
| OpenTelemetry | Available through plugins. | Native OTLP ingestion and delivery. |
| License | Apache License v2.0 | Apache License v2.0 |
Both Fluentd and Fluent Bit can work as Aggregators or Forwarders, and can complement each other or be used as standalone solutions.
In the recent years, cloud providers have switched from Fluentd to Fluent Bit for performance and compatibility. Fluent Bit is now considered the next-generation solution.