About Fluent Bit
Fluent Bit is a lightweight, open source processor and forwarder for logs, metrics and traces. It is often used in containerised and cloud environments where resource use needs to stay low.
What it does
Fluent Bit collects telemetry from many sources, parses and filters it, and routes it to one or more destinations. It supports OpenTelemetry through OTLP for both ingestion and delivery. Buffering and I/O handlers help protect data during outages, and built-in enrichment and stream processing allow data to be shaped before it is stored. It runs on Windows and Linux machines and is designed to keep CPU and memory use small.
Key features
- Collect, parse, filter and route logs
- Native OTLP ingestion and delivery
- Small footprint for containers and edge devices
- Buffering to protect data during outages
- Built-in enrichment and stream processing
Who it's for
Platform engineers and DevOps teams that need a light agent on many servers or containers. It also suits teams that want to send telemetry from one place to several backends.
Pricing and good to know
The project is licensed under Apache-2.0 and the source is on GitHub, so there is no licence fee to use it. Commercial enterprise options are also offered by its maintainers. Its configuration is file based, so changes to parsing and routing rules are usually made through version-controlled config files.
Highlights
- Collect, parse, filter and route logs
- Native OpenTelemetry OTLP support
- Small footprint for containers and edge devices
- Buffering to protect data during outages
