Cilium vs Calico: Which Kubernetes CNI Should Run Your Production Cluster?

· Aleksei Aleinikov · Oct. 5, 2026, 6:54 a.m.
Summary
This blog post provides a comparative analysis of Cilium and Calico, two Kubernetes CNI options, emphasizing their performance, network policy models, observability, and encryption capabilities. It addresses real-world considerations for deploying these tools in production, including what major cloud providers actually use and potential migration challenges.
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