Terminal UI for Kubernetes that lists and watches cluster resources in real time and lets you view logs, exec into pods and act on resources with keystrokes.
Pricing and hosting
- Pricing
- Free
- Open source
- Yes (Apache-2.0)
- Self-hosted
- Yes
- Launched
- 2019
- Status
- Active
- Website
- k9scli.io
Plans and prices change; check the tool's own site before you decide.
What it does
Kubernetes and container monitoring checklist
3 of 10 confirmed in k9s's own documentation. The same checklist is used for every tool in Kubernetes.
- Cluster, node and pod metrics Yes
- Kubernetes events Not confirmed
- Pod logs Yes
- Cluster view Yes
- Requests and limits advice Not confirmed
- Change timeline Not confirmed
- Network visibility No
- Alerting No
- Multi-cluster Not confirmed
- Runs in your cluster No
Terminal UI run from a workstation: switches between kubeconfig contexts one at a time; no alerting. Events viewing not documented on the site.
Checked against: k9scli.io, github.com, k9scli.io (2)
Alternatives to k9s
Other kubernetes and container monitoring tools. See all 25.
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Botkube Kubernetes ChatOps bot that posts cluster events and alerts to Slack, Discord or Mattermost and lets you run kubectl from chat. -
Checkmk Infrastructure monitoring for servers, networks, cloud and containers with automatic service discovery; the base edition is open source and paid editions add more. -
Coroot Open source observability that uses eBPF to build service maps and collect metrics, logs, traces and profiles without code changes, with root-cause hints. -
Dozzle Small web UI that streams and searches live Docker container logs across hosts, with no log storage. Optional Dozzle Cloud adds grouped alerts and log analysis. -
Freelens Community-maintained open source Kubernetes desktop IDE, forked from OpenLens, for managing clusters and viewing workloads, metrics and logs. -
groundcover Kubernetes observability that uses an eBPF sensor and runs in your own cloud account, covering logs, traces, metrics and APM without code changes. -
Headlamp Kubernetes web UI and desktop app, now a Kubernetes SIG UI project, for browsing cluster resources, logs and events, extensible with plugins. -
Inspektor Gadget CNCF project of eBPF-based tools (gadgets) for inspecting and debugging Kubernetes workloads and Linux hosts, from network traces to process and file activity. -
K8sGPT CLI and operator that scans Kubernetes clusters for problems and explains them in plain language using an LLM backend of your choice. CNCF sandbox project. -
Komodor Commercial platform for Kubernetes troubleshooting and operations that tracks changes and health across clusters and uses AI agents to investigate and fix issues. -
Kubeshark Captures and dissects API traffic between Kubernetes pods (HTTP, gRPC, Kafka, DNS and more) so you can inspect requests cluster-wide, like Wireshark for Kubernetes. -
Lens Desktop Kubernetes IDE for browsing clusters, resource metrics and logs across many clusters. Free for individuals and small organizations; paid plans add team and enterprise features.