Fluent Bit
CNCF graduated lightweight log/metric forwarder. The default in-cluster log shipper for Kubernetes.
| License | Apache-2.0 |
| Repository | https://github.com/fluent/fluent-bit |
| GitHub stars (approx) | 8000 |
| Language | C |
| Self-host deployment | single binary, docker, kubernetes daemonset |
| Commercial hosted option | no / self-host only |
| Freshness status | Fresh |
| Freshness checked | 2026-05-17 |
| Categories | logs, metrics |
Fluent Bit is the C-based, ~5MB footprint sibling of Fluentd. It is the de-facto log forwarder for Kubernetes — most managed k8s log integrations ship a Fluent Bit DaemonSet under the hood.
Pick it if: you need a tiny, fast, embedded-friendly log/metric agent. Excellent for edge devices, sidecar containers, or as a node-local collector that ships to a heavier aggregator (Loki, OpenSearch, S3).
Skip it if: you need complex multi-stage routing and transforms across many sources — Vector or the OpenTelemetry Collector are easier to reason about. Also skip if you want full OpenTelemetry traces support (Fluent Bit added OTLP recently but is logs/metrics-first).
Deployment: k8s DaemonSet is the most common pattern. Helm chart maintained by the project. Configuration is INI-flavored, not YAML.