Calico product editions
Calico Open Source
Open-source networking and security for containers and Kubernetes
Calico Cloud Free
Observability & policy management for a single cluster
Calico Cloud
SaaS platform for Kubernetes networking and security
Calico Enterprise
Self-managed platform for Kubernetes networking and security
Which product edition is right for me?
| My needs | Calico product edition |
|---|---|
| I want open source, best-in-class networking, network security, and observability capabilities that can work across any Kubernetes distribution, for free. | Calico Open Source Get Started |
| I’m a Calico Open Source user who wants to leverage some of the improved observability and policy management capabilities that are available in Calico Cloud, for free. | Calico Cloud Free Sign up |
| My organization wants a fully managed SaaS platform for network security and observability. | Calico Cloud Get Started |
| My organization wants a self-managed platform for network security and observability. | Calico Enterprise Get Started |
Feature comparison matrix
| Calico Open Source | Calico Cloud Free Tier* | Calico Cloud | Calico Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Management and Support | ||||
| Mutli-cluster security controls management | ||||
| Data retention | In-memory | 24 hours | 7 days | Unlimited |
| Number of clusters | Unlimited | One | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Number of users | N/A | One | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Support and maintenance | Community-driven | Community-driven | Standard/Business | Standard/Business |
| Networking | ||||
| High performance, scalable pod networking | ||||
| Advanced IP address management | ||||
| Direct infrastructure peering without the overlay | ||||
| eBPF data plane | ||||
| Windows data plane | ||||
| nftables data plane | ||||
| iptables data plane | ||||
| VPP data plane | ||||
| Multiple Calico networks on a pod | ||||
| Dual ToR peering | ||||
| Ingress gateway | ||||
| Egress gateway | ||||
| Cluster mesh | ||||
| Network Security | ||||
| Seamless support for Kubernetes network policy | ||||
| Label-based policies for K8s and non-K8s workloads | ||||
| Namespace and cluster-wide scope | ||||
| Global default deny policy design | ||||
| Application layer policy | ||||
| Policy for services | ||||
| Policy board | View only | |||
| DNS/FQDN-based policy | ||||
| Hierarchical tiered network policy | ||||
| Policy recommendations | Manual workflow | |||
| Staged network policy | ||||
| Preview staged policies | ||||
| Network sets to limit IP ranges for egress and ingress traffic to workloads | ||||
| Data-in-transit encryption | ||||
| Universal firewall integration | ||||
| Workload-based IDS/IPS | ||||
| Deep packet inspection | ||||
| DDoS protection | ||||
| Workload-centric WAF | ||||
| Compliance reporting and alerts | ||||
| SIEM integrations | ||||
| Network Security for VMs and Bare Metal | ||||
| Restrict traffic to/from hosts and VMs using network policy | ||||
| Automatic host endpoints | ||||
| Apply policy to host-forwarded traffic | ||||
| Observability | ||||
| Flow logs API | ||||
| Calico Whisker web console | ||||
| Dynamic service and threat graph | ||||
| Application level observability | ||||
| Dynamic packet capture | ||||
| Flow visualizer | ||||
| Logs (flow) | ||||
| Logs (http traffic, audit, bgp, dns, events) | ||||
| Dashboards | ** | |||
| Alerts |
* Calico Cloud Free requires a cluster with Calico Open Source 3.30 or higher.
** Calico Cloud Free includes some of the dashboards that are available in Calico Cloud and Calico Enterprise.
How to get started with Calico
Calico powers 100M+ containers across 8M+ nodes in 166 countries, and is supported across all major cloud providers and Kubernetes distributions.
Ready to get started?
Start a free trial or request a demo to see Calico in action.
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