Akita is lighter weight in terms of install and setup than Cilium's Hubble and will get you to insights more quickly. With Akita, it's easier to have a single dev use Akita and get visibility across many services. Cilium's Hubble is more of a power tool: it will give you more different kinds of data, which can be quite useful for people who are looking for that.
Akita is currently only accessible as a hosted SaaS product (with a free tier).