K3s vs srelens

K3s is a certified, lightweight Kubernetes distribution for IoT and edge computing. It runs self-hosted on Linux and is released for x86_64, ARMv7, and ARM64. The distribution arrives as one binary or a minimal container image; the site describes the binary as under 70 MB, while documentation says under 100 MB. Documented uses include edge systems, homelabs, IoT, continuous integration, development, ARM single-board computers, air-gapped environments, and embedded Kubernetes. SQLite is the default datastore, with etcd, MySQL, and Postgres available. K3s packages containerd or cri-dockerd, Flannel, CoreDNS, Traefik, ServiceLB, Kube-router, local-path-provisioner, and Spegel. High-availability deployments can use embedded storage or external MySQL, PostgreSQL, or etcd. Air-gapped installation supports private registries, manually deployed images, or an embedded registry mirror. Security guidance includes hardening and CIS self-assessment material. Automated Kubernetes-native upgrades use Rancher’s system-upgrade-controller.

srelens is a Kubernetes desktop workspace for browsing, inspecting, and operating clusters. It covers more than 40 resource kinds, including workloads, networking, storage, RBAC, admission, autoscaling, and custom resources. Investigation tools include live watches, log streaming, in-pod terminals, port forwarding, Helm release views, and a schema-aware YAML editor. CPU and memory metrics for nodes and pods come through Kubernetes Metrics Server. Users can scale or restart workloads and cordon, drain, or evict nodes; destructive actions require confirmation. The desktop app connects directly to Kubernetes API servers using local kubeconfig credentials, without an intermediary srelens cloud service. Available operations depend on the selected context’s credentials and RBAC permissions. Added kubeconfig files stay local, and pasted configs are stored in the application directory. Secret values are masked by default and revealed per key. The built-in MCP server connects to clients such as Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Codex. srelens is free, open source under the MIT license, and requires no account or license key.