Cloud Advanced
Service Mesh Comparison — Istio vs Linkerd vs Consul¶
Service MeshIstioLinkerdConsul 5 min read
Performance, features, complexity and when to choose which mesh.
Features¶
- Istio — most complex, Envoy, richest traffic mgmt
- Linkerd — lightest, Rust proxy, zero-config mTLS
- Consul — multi-platform (K8s + VMs), HashiCorp
Performance¶
# Per-proxy overhead:
# Istio (Envoy): ~50MB RAM, ~10ms p99
# Linkerd: ~20MB RAM, ~3ms p99
# 100 pods = 5GB (Istio) vs 2GB (Linkerd)
When to Choose Which¶
- Istio — enterprise, complex policies
- Linkerd — quick start, performance
- Consul — hybrid K8s + VMs
- None — <20 services? You probably don’t need it
Summary¶
Mesh adds complexity. Add it only when you need mTLS/traffic mgmt across services.
Need Help with Implementation?¶
Our team has experience designing and implementing modern architectures. We’re happy to help.