K9s vs srelens

K9s is a free, open-source terminal interface for navigating, observing, and managing Kubernetes clusters and applications. It watches cluster changes, tracks resource activity in real time, and shows metrics for pods, containers, and nodes. Standard Kubernetes resources and custom resource definitions are supported. Users can view logs, scale resources, restart them, and create port forwards. Pulses summarizes cluster state, while XRay shows resource dependencies. Skins, columns, aliases, and hotkeys are customizable, and plugins add cluster commands with resource and cluster context variables. K9s displays RBAC rules and can show what a user, group, or ServiceAccount may do. Read-only mode disables resource modification commands. Integration with Hey supports HTTP endpoint benchmarking through port forwards and services; those forwards end when the K9s session exits. K9s runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, has no graphical interface, and is licensed under Apache License 2.0. The project prefers Kubernetes 1.28 or later and warns that older versions or insufficient RBAC permissions can cause problems.

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.