Envoy Proxy
An open source edge and service proxy, designed for cloud-native applications.
Overview
Envoy is an L7 proxy and communication bus designed for large modern service oriented architectures. The project was born out of the belief that the network should be transparent to applications. When network and application problems occur, it should be easy to determine the source of the problem. Envoy is the data plane for many service mesh solutions, including Istio.
✨ Key Features
- Out-of-process architecture
- L3/L4 filter architecture
- HTTP L7 filter architecture
- First-class gRPC, HTTP/2, and HTTP/3 support
- Advanced load balancing
- Deep observability
🎯 Key Differentiators
- API-driven configuration
- Designed for microservices and service mesh
- Extensive observability features
Unique Value: Provides a universal, high-performance data plane that abstracts networking away from applications, enabling consistent traffic management, security, and observability across services.
🎯 Use Cases (3)
✅ Best For
- Implementing service mesh architectures as the universal data plane.
- Acting as a high-performance edge proxy.
- Providing deep observability into network traffic.
💡 Check With Vendor
Verify these considerations match your specific requirements:
- As a standalone service mesh control plane (it is only the data plane)
- Simple web server
🏆 Alternatives
Compared to traditional proxies like NGINX and HAProxy, Envoy is designed from the ground up for dynamic, API-driven configuration suitable for microservices, whereas others have been adapted for this role.
💻 Platforms
🔌 Integrations
💰 Pricing
Free tier: Open source, free to use.
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