Buoyant Enterprise for Linkerd Plans and Pricing

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Choose the plan that's right for you

Standard

$300/mo
for the first 100 meshed pods.
$50/month for each additional 100 pods.

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For teams adopting modern platform security, reliability, and observability via the service mesh.

Automated installs and upgrades
Enterprise support forums
SLAs on CVE remediation
Mutual TLS and basic service mesh featureset

Premium

$500/mo
for the first 100 meshed pods.
$75/month for each additional 100 pods.  

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Discuss pricing

For companies standardizing on security, high availability, and multi-cluster communication

Everything in Standard, plus:
Multi-cluster communication
L7 network security policies
Automatic cross-cluster failover
Support for Linux VM workloads

Enterprise

Let's talk

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For enterprises with special security, compliance, and additional operational requirements.

Everything in Premium, plus:
Hotfix releases and SBOMs
High Availability Zone-aware
Load Balancing
FIPS 140-2 validated cryptographic modules
Enterprise Support with 24x7 SLAs

Try it for free

Buoyant Enterprise for Linkerd is always free to try for non-production traffic —no plan required.
Companies with fewer than 50 employees can use BEL in production for free, at any scale.

Compare Plans

Standard

Premium

Enterprise

Stability and Risk Reduction

Zero-downtime deploys and upgrades
Semantically-versioned upgrades
CVE remediation SLAs

Automation

Advanced multi-cluster (early 2025)

Security

Zero-config encryption and authentication of all meshed traffic
Cryptographic workload identities, not IP addresses
Secure-by-default Rust data plane
Zero-trust granular authorization policies

Reliability

Latency-based load balancing
Timeouts and retries
Circuit breaking
gRPC load balancing
Blue-green / canary deploys
Failover across clusters

Traffic Routing

L7-aware request routing
Transparent multi-cluster communication
VM application support

Observability

Uniform L7 metrics including success rates and latency distributions
Easy export to any Prometheus-compatible metrics store
Distributed tracing
Enhanced on-cluster dashboard (2025)

Standards

Gateway API support
Mutual TLS (mTLS) with TLS 1.3
IPv6

Compliance

Software Bills-of-Materials (SBOMs) for all components
Hotfix releases
FIPS 140-2 and 140-3 validated cryptographic modules

Management with Buoyant Cloud (SaaS)

Single pane of glass multi-cluster dashboard
Continuous health checking
Alerts and metrics integration with Datadog, Teams, PagerDuty, and more

Cost reduction

Support and integration

Private support ticketing
24x7 on call SLAs
30-day "white glove" onboarding
Architecture review and best practice guidance

Compare Plans

Open Source

Standard

Premium

Enterprise

Stability and Risk Reduction
Zero-downtime deploys and upgrades
Semantically-versioned upgrades
CVE remediation SLAs
Automation
Advanced multi-cluster (early 2025)
Security
Zero-config encryption and authentication of all meshed traffic
Cryptographic workload identities, not IP addresses
Secure-by-default Rust data plane
Zero-trust granular authorization policies
Reliability
Latency-based load balancing
Timeouts and retries
Circuit breaking
gRPC load balancing
Blue-green / canary deploys
Failover across clusters
Traffic Routing
L7-aware request routing
Transparent multi-cluster communication
VM application support
Observability
Uniform L7 metrics including success rates and latency distributions
Easy export to any Prometheus-compatible metrics store
Distributed tracing
Enhanced on-cluster dashboard (2025)
Standards
Gateway API support
Mutual TLS (mTLS) with TLS 1.3
IPv6
Compliance
Software Bills-of-Materials (SBOMs) for all components
Hotfix releases
FIPS 140-2 and FIPS 140-3
Management with Buoyant Cloud (SaaS)
Single pane of glass multi-cluster dashboard
Continuous health checking
Alerts and metrics integration with Datadog, Teams, PagerDuty, and more
Cost reduction
Support and integration
Private support ticketing
24x7 on call SLAs
30-day "white glove" onboarding
Architecture review and best practice guidance

Compare Plans

Open Source

Standard

Premium

Enterprise

Stability and Risk Reduction
Zero-downtime deploys and upgrades
Semantically-versioned upgrades
CVE remediation SLAs
Automation
Advanced multi-cluster (early 2025)
Security
Zero-config encryption and authentication of all meshed traffic
Cryptographic workload identities, not IP addresses
Secure-by-default Rust data plane
Zero-trust granular authorization policies
Reliability
Latency-based load balancing
Timeouts and retries
Circuit breaking
gRPC load balancing
Blue-green / canary deploys
Failover across clusters
Traffic Routing
L7-aware request routing
Transparent multi-cluster communication
VM application support
Observability
Uniform L7 metrics including success rates and latency distributions
Easy export to any Prometheus-compatible metrics store
Distributed tracing
Enhance on-cluster dashboard
Standards
Gateway API support
Mutual TLS (mTLS) with TLS 1.3
IPv6
Compliance
Software Bills-of-Materials (SBOMs) for all components
Hotfix releases
FIPS 140-2 and FIPS 140-3
Management with Buoyant Cloud (SaaS)
Single pane of glass multi-cluster dashboard
Continuous health checking
Alerts and metrics integration with Datadog, Teams, PagerDuty, and more
Cost reduction
Support and integration
Private support ticketing
24x7 on-call SLAs
30-day "white glove" onboarding
Architecture review and best practice guidance

Frequently asked questions

I have more than 2,500 meshed pods. How much will Buoyant Enterprise for Linkerd cost?
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We've got you covered. Please contact us for volume pricing.

My pod count can vary wildly because of our architecture. What should I do?
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We use the monthly median number of pods to account for fluctuations in pod counts. If you have a unique architecture for which that approach isn't sufficient, please contact us and we'll find a way to make it work.

I work at a non-profit. Can we get a break?
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We're happy to accommodate non-profits and others in unique situations.
Contact us!

What happens if I go over my pod count?
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We want to make billing as predictable as possible. If you go over your licensed pod count for a month, we’ll let you know, and you’ll be charged for the difference in a subsequent month.

Do I have to pay to try BEL?
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No. Buoyant Enterprise for Linkerd is free to use for non-production and trial use. Test away!

What constitutes "production use"?
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Production use includes handling any traffic from your customers, or handling any traffic that is directly tied to revenue or otherwise critical to the business.

I’m using open source Linkerd. How do I try BEL?
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You can easily upgrade from open source Linkerd 2.14 to BEL using your existing workflows. See the docs for more.

What is the difference between BEL and Linkerd?
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Buoyant Enterprise for Linkerd is our production-ready distribution of  Linkerd. BEL is how we run Linkerd ourselves in our production-critical systems, and we're confident that it is the most stable, reliable, and powerful way to run and operate Linkerd for your mission-critical applications. Read more about the differences between BEL and open source Linkerd.

What are stable releases?
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Stable releases have semantic version guarantees for upgrades, meaning changes in the minor version will never introduce breaking changes and will minimize the delta from the previous version. Each BEL release is delivered as a stable release package, including binaries and Helm charts, and has undergone rigorous testing in many environments before publication.

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