Seabird vs srelens

Seabird is a desktop Kubernetes IDE for exploring and managing clusters on Linux, macOS, and Windows. It brings logs and metrics into a graphical interface, including memory and CPU utilization for nodes, pods, and containers through Metrics Server integration. A native terminal runs commands in containers, and the manifest editor keeps the API reference available while authoring. Users can forward a container port to localhost with a button. Credential plugins can add authentication protocols the Kubernetes client does not support natively; those plugins must be installed on the system PATH. The project describes Seabird as designed for the GNOME desktop, recommends Flatpak on Linux, and makes downloads available through its releases. The Flatpak can access files only in the home directory unless system-directory access is granted with Flatseal. Seabird is released under the Mozilla Public License v2, and its source code is available for audit. It is paid, has no free plan, and offers an unlimited free trial.

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.