What is Fluent Bit used for?

Fluent Bit is a lightweight, scalable logging, metrics, and traces processor and forwarder designed for cloud and containerized environments. It is a good fit for collecting and forwarding logs from containerized applications, processing and routing telemetry data in cloud environments, and building observability pipelines with OpenTelemetry.

Is Fluent Bit open source?

Yes. Fluent Bit is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at fluent/fluent-bit and is written mainly in C.

Yes. Fluent Bit is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host Fluent Bit?

Yes. Fluent Bit can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Fluent Bit an alternative to?

Fluent Bit is an open-source alternative to Mezmo and Cribl. Other open-source alternatives to Mezmo include OpenTelemetry Collector, Vector and Kibana.

Is Fluent Bit actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Fluent Bit was on 14 October 2026, and the latest release is v5.1.3, published on 1 October 2026. The project has 8.2k stars on GitHub.

Fluent Bit: open-source alternative to Mezmo, Cribl

About Fluent Bit

Fluent Bit is a high-performance data plane that moves, processes, and routes telemetry data at scale across logs, metrics, and traces. It provides native OpenTelemetry support through OTLP ingestion and delivery, operating efficiently across hybrid environments. The tool is built for practical routing, enrichment, and delivery across modern environments.

Key features

Native OTLP ingestion and delivery for modern telemetry pipelines
Efficient routing across hybrid, cloud, and on-prem environments
High-performance processing across logs, metrics, and traces
Built-in enrichment, buffering, and stream processing capabilities
Lightweight, asynchronous design optimizes resource usage: CPU, memory, disk I/O, network
Granular management of data parsing and routing with filtering and enrichment

Good fit for

Collecting and forwarding logs from containerized applications
Processing and routing telemetry data in cloud environments
Building observability pipelines with OpenTelemetry

Built with: C tools
Tags: logs; metrics; traces; opentelemetry; observability; data pipeline

Fluent Bit: questions and answers

What is Fluent Bit used for?: Fluent Bit is a lightweight, scalable logging, metrics, and traces processor and forwarder designed for cloud and containerized environments. It is a good fit for collecting and forwarding logs from containerized applications, processing and routing telemetry data in cloud environments, and building observability pipelines with OpenTelemetry.
Is Fluent Bit open source?: Yes. Fluent Bit is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at fluent/fluent-bit and is written mainly in C.
Is Fluent Bit free?: Yes. Fluent Bit is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Fluent Bit?: Yes. Fluent Bit can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Fluent Bit an alternative to?: Fluent Bit is an open-source alternative to Mezmo and Cribl. Other open-source alternatives to Mezmo include OpenTelemetry Collector, Vector and Kibana.
Is Fluent Bit actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Fluent Bit was on 14 October 2026, and the latest release is v5.1.3, published on 1 October 2026. The project has 8.2k stars on GitHub.