Log pipeline

Fluentd / Fluent Bit

open source / community (CNCF)

The CNCF-standard log forwarders — Fluentd (heavier aggregator) and Fluent Bit (ultra-light edge agent, now the recommended default), routing logs to any backend.

Visit site ↗ Repo ↗

Category: Log pipeline
License: Open source
Deployment: Self-hosted
Cost: Free
Free tier: Yes
Self-host effort: Moderate
Maturity: Established
Popularity: ≈13.4k GitHub stars (Fluent Bit); CNCF graduated

The catch

Powerful but config-heavy — Fluentd's Ruby footprint is comparatively heavy, the two tools have overlapping-but-different configs, and CNCF is steering users Fluentd → Fluent Bit.

Monitors

LogsMetricsTracesK8sServers

Protocols

SyslogOTLP

Built for

SRE / DevOps

Alternatives & comparisons

Vector Fluentd / Fluent Bit vs Vector →

Logstash & Beats Fluentd / Fluent Bit vs Logstash & Beats →