k9s

k9s is a terminal-based UI that wraps the Kubernetes API and turns cluster management into a keyboard-driven experience. We rate it 92/100 — if you spend any meaningful time in kubectl, k9s will pay for itself (which is easy, because it is free) within a week.

What is k9s?

k9s is an open-source Kubernetes CLI written in Go by Fernand Galiana of Imhotep Software LLC. The first public release landed on February 4, 2019, and the project has grown into one of the most starred Kubernetes tools on GitHub — 33,500+ stars as of May 2026. It is licensed under Apache-2.0 and ships as a single static binary for macOS, Linux, and Windows.

The tool replaces dozens of kubectl incantations with an interactive terminal dashboard. Pods, deployments, services, CRDs, RBAC bindings, even raw events stream into colour-coded tables that auto-refresh as the cluster changes. The current release at time of writing is v0.50.18, published January 11, 2026.

Key Features of k9s

• Real-time resource views: Tables for pods, nodes, deployments, services, ingresses, and any CRD update on a sub-second tick. No manual watch loops.
• Pulses and XRay: Pulses gives a single-pane health snapshot of the whole cluster; XRay walks the dependency graph from a workload down to its config maps and secrets.
• Logs, exec, port-forward in one keystroke: l tails logs, s drops you into a shell, Shift+F sets up a port-forward — all without leaving the UI.
• RBAC inspector and reverse lookup: Ask "what can service-account-x actually do on this cluster?" and get the answer in two key presses.
• Plugins and hotkeys: Drop a YAML file into ~/.config/k9s/plugins.yaml and bind any external command (kubectl debug, stern, velero) to a key.
• Built-in HTTP benchmarking: A Vegeta-powered load generator hits a service from inside the cluster so you can size requests and limits empirically.
• Skins: Themable colour schemes — useful when you operate prod and staging side by side and want a visual safety rail.

What Users Say About k9s

Sentiment in the SRE corner of the internet is overwhelmingly positive. Engineers on Hacker News and r/kubernetes consistently call k9s "the only kubectl wrapper that stuck", and the most upvoted Reddit threads cite the 10-keystroke rule: once you memorise about ten shortcuts you will move through a cluster faster than kubectl tab-completion. Common praise centres on the speed (single Go binary, no Electron), the colour-coded log viewer, and the RBAC reverse-lookup — a feature most GUI alternatives still do not ship.

The recurring complaints are also consistent: editing manifests inside k9s opens $EDITOR on a temporary file, which some prefer to avoid in favour of GitOps; sponsorship has been declining, leading to community concern about long-term maintenance velocity; and on very large clusters (thousands of pods) the initial namespace fetch can stall for a few seconds. None of these are dealbreakers, but they are honest paper cuts.

k9s Pricing

k9s is free and open source under the Apache-2.0 license. There are no paid tiers, no telemetry, and no SaaS upsell. The maintainer accepts contributions through GitHub Sponsors but every feature ships in the public binary.

Plan	Price	Includes
Open Source	$0	All features, all platforms, no usage limits
GitHub Sponsors	From $5/month (optional)	Supports the maintainer; no extra software features

Who Should Use k9s?

Best for: Platform engineers, SREs, and back-end developers who already live in kubectl, on-call rotations that need to triage incidents fast, and anyone running multiple clusters across local kind/minikube and managed providers like EKS, GKE, or AKS.

Not ideal for: Read-only stakeholders who prefer point-and-click GUIs, large enterprise teams that need RBAC-aware multi-cluster catalogs and collaborative dashboards (Lens or Headlamp fit that workflow better), or organisations where every change must go through GitOps and a terminal write path is discouraged.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Single statically-linked binary — install with brew install k9s in under 10 seconds.
• Keyboard-driven workflow that demonstrably outpaces kubectl on common tasks once a handful of shortcuts are learned.
• First-class CRD support — ArgoCD, Istio, Flux, and Knative resources show up out of the box.
• Plugin system means you almost never need to leave the UI for adjacent tools like stern or kubectl-neat.

Cons:

• Manifest editing is YAML-in-$EDITOR; users who want diff-aware UI editing will prefer Lens.
• No native multi-cluster pane — you context-switch via :ctx, you do not see two clusters at once.
• Steep learning curve for users who are not already comfortable on the command line.
• Maintainer bus factor is one. Sponsorships have been trending down according to the maintainer, which is worth tracking.

Alternatives to k9s

The closest comparable products are Lens Desktop (Electron GUI, multi-cluster catalog, paid Pro tier), Headlamp (open-source web/desktop dashboard from the CNCF ecosystem), and the official Kubernetes Dashboard (web UI, install per-cluster). Lens wins on visual polish and team features; Headlamp wins on extensibility and is fully open; Kubernetes Dashboard wins on zero installation if you already have kubectl proxy. None match k9s on raw incident-response speed in a terminal.

Verdict: Is k9s Worth It?

For anyone who runs a Kubernetes cluster in production — or even just a serious homelab — k9s is essentially free productivity. We rate it 92/100. It loses points only for the single-maintainer risk and the absence of a true multi-cluster pane. Install it tonight, learn five shortcuts (:pods, l, d, s, Ctrl-D), and the next on-call rotation will feel measurably less painful.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is k9s free?

Yes. k9s is fully free and open source under the Apache-2.0 license. There are no paid tiers, premium features, or usage caps.

What platforms does k9s support?

k9s ships pre-built binaries for macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon), Linux (amd64, arm64, arm), and Windows. It is also available via Homebrew, Chocolatey, Scoop, MacPorts, Snap, and most Linux package managers.

How does k9s compare to Lens?

k9s is a terminal UI optimised for speed and keyboard workflows; Lens is an Electron desktop app optimised for visual cluster management and team workflows. k9s is faster for incident triage and shell access; Lens is better for multi-cluster catalogs and non-CLI users. Many engineers run both.

Is k9s open source?

Yes. The full source is on GitHub at derailed/k9s under the Apache-2.0 license. The project has 33,500+ stars and accepts external contributions.

Does k9s work with EKS, GKE, and AKS?

Yes. k9s reads your standard ~/.kube/config file, so any cluster reachable through kubectl — including managed services like Amazon EKS, Google GKE, Azure AKS, DigitalOcean Kubernetes, and local kind/minikube/k3d — works out of the box.

What is the latest version of k9s?

The latest stable release is v0.50.18, published January 11, 2026. New versions ship roughly every 4–8 weeks.