Fluentd vs Vector
Fluentd and Vector are both telemetry pipeline software. Fluentd is open source under Apache-2.0, with 14k GitHub stars. Vector is open source under MPL-2.0, with 23k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick Fluentd when
- You need a central log aggregator with plugins for unusual sources or destinations.
- Pick Vector when
- You need a fast, single-binary agent or aggregator to reshape and ship telemetry, for example to cut observability costs.
Side by side
A CNCF data collector that unifies logging by routing events from many sources to many outputs through a large plugin ecosystem.
A Rust observability pipeline that collects, transforms and routes logs, metrics and traces between many sources and destinations.
Ruby-based and heavier than Fluent Bit or Vector; many teams now use Fluent Bit at the edge.
Owned by Datadog and still pre-1.0 in version numbering.
Production-ready (both)
Self-hosted server
Self-hosted server and command line
Ruby
Rust and Tokio
Open source, Apache-2.0 (permissive)
Open source, MPL-2.0 (weak copyleft)
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.
You can use it inside a product you sell; changes you make to its own files must be shared.
14k GitHub stars
23k GitHub stars
Established: started 15 years ago, latest release v1.20.1.
Established: started 8 years ago, latest release v0.61.0.
Other comparisons
More telemetry collectors and pipelines
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from each project's README and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.