Dapr versus service meshes

Both Dapr and the service mesh offer overlapping capabilities, raising the question of how Dapr compares to a service mesh and when one should be used over the other. While both Dapr and service meshes have the same goal of reducing complexity, their intended audiences are somewhat different. Dapr focuses on improving the developer experience by abstracting your microservices and offering a collection of building blocks to meet common microservices needs, whereas a service mesh helps application operators by providing a network service mesh that addresses networking concerns. Let's take a closer look at the similarities and differences between the two, as listed in the following table:

Table 6.2 – Comparing Dapr and service meshes

So, should you employ Dapr, a service mesh, or a hybrid of the two? Well, the answer depends on your needs. When using both Dapr and a service mesh, it might seem intuitive to activate the...