AWS App Mesh
7.1#2 in service mesh platformsFree planFree planWebAPILinuxmacOS
VisitAWS App Mesh vs Linkerd
What both publish
| Fact | AWS App Mesh | Linkerd |
|---|---|---|
| Integrations | The feature page lists Amazon CloudWatch and AWS X-Ray, along with partner and open source tools including Datadog, HashiCorp, and Sysdig. | Linkerd can use Prometheus and Grafana for metrics and dashboards, and supports distributed tracing. |
| Observability | App Mesh collects service metrics, logs and traces and integrates with Amazon CloudWatch and AWS X-Ray. | Linkerd records request volume, success rates, and latency distributions for HTTP, HTTP/2, and gRPC traffic, plus TCP-level metrics. |
| Proxy | App Mesh uses the open source Envoy proxy to manage traffic into and out of service containers. | Linkerd’s ultralight Linkerd2-proxy is written in Rust and designed specifically for the service mesh sidecar use case. |
| Security | AWS App Mesh API clients must support TLS 1.2, and AWS recommends TLS 1.3. | Linkerd automatically enables mutual TLS for communication between meshed applications and supports authorization policies between services. |
AWS App Mesh plans
- AWS App MeshFree
- AWS App Mesh usageFree
Linkerd plans
- Linkerd open sourceFree
Pick AWS App Mesh if…
It suits teams managing service-to-service traffic in supported AWS environments that need routing controls and service monitoring. The announced end of support is important for anyone considering it.
Pick Linkerd if…
It suits teams running workloads on Kubernetes that need service-level traffic controls, metrics, and mutual TLS. It also fits environments with an existing metrics store to supplement.