Kubus vs srelens
Kubus
kubus-app.dev
srelens
srelens.comSide by side
| Figure | Kubus | srelens |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Local Kubernetes Tools | 7.6 (#20) | 8.3 (#3) |
| Helm | Kubus supports Helm release browsing, installation, upgrades, rollbacks, and uninstall without requiring the Helm binary. | Helm releases can be inspected, upgraded, rolled back or uninstalled with rendered-diff previews. |
| Integrations | Kubus uses existing kubeconfig credentials and supports GKE, EKS, and AKS through their credential plugins; it can also connect through SSH jump hosts or SOCKS/HTTP proxies. | The built-in MCP server connects to MCP clients such as Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Codex over stdio or loopback HTTP. |
| Multi-cluster | It can display selected kubeconfig contexts together in merged lists with a cluster column. | Users can load multiple kubeconfig files, preserve duplicate context names and switch clusters from a hotbar. |
| Support | The maker welcomes bug reports, ideas, and pull requests through the GitHub issue tracker. | The documentation directs users to open a GitHub issue with safely shareable application log details for reproducible bugs. |
Plans
In their own words
Kubus
Kubus is a free, open-source Kubernetes GUI that runs locally and brings cluster resources, logs, shells, port forwards, metrics, and Helm into one desktop app. It can combine selected kubeconfig contexts in merged lists, with a cluster column identifying each resource's context. Alongside built-in Kubernetes resource types, it discovers custom resource definitions live. For troubleshooting, Kubus streams logs from multiple pods and provides container terminals, ephemeral debug containers, and node shells. Users can browse, install, upgrade, roll back, and uninstall Helm releases without the Helm binary. Kubus uses existing kubeconfig credentials and supports GKE, EKS, and AKS through their credential plugins; connections can also use SSH jump hosts or SOCKS and HTTP proxies. The local server binds to 127.0.0.1, and the maker says there is no cloud, account, or telemetry; Secret values are redacted by default. It is available on Windows, macOS, and Linux, though new releases no longer support Intel Macs. Metrics and health charts require metrics-server in the cluster.
srelens
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.