Kubetools - A Curated List of Kubernetes Tools

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There are more than 300+ Kubernetes Certified Service Providers and tons of Kubernetes Certified distributions. Choosing a right distribution can be a daunting task. Kubetools is built with a purpose to build a curated list of popular Kubernetes tools. It is actively maintained by Collabnix Slack Community.

Follow the Kubetools Twitter account for updates on new list additions.

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Categories
- 🧰 Cluster Management
- 🧑‍💻 Cluster with Core CLI tools
- 🫙 Alert and Monitoring
- 🌐 Logging and Tracing
- 🗄️ Troubleshooting / Debugging
- 💾 Developement Tools/Kit
- 🔒 Alternative Tools for Developement
- 🪵 CI/CD integration Tools
- 🎮 Security Tools
- 🧪 Network Policies
- 🏗️ Testing Tools
- ⚙️ Service Mesh
- 🇼 Observability
- 🧰 Machine Learning/Deep Learning
- 🧑‍💻 Compute Edge Tools
- 🫙 Kubernetes Tools for Specific Cloud
- 🌐 Storage Providers
- 🗄️ Multiple Tools Repo
- 💾 Cost Optimisation
- ⚙️ Function as a Service FaaS
- 🔒 Non-Categorize

Cluster Management

Sr No	Tool Name	Description with URL	GitHub Popularity
1	Monokle	Desktop unified visual tool for authoring, analysis and deployment of Kubernetes configurations
2	kops	Production Grade K8s Installation, Upgrades, and Management
3	silver-surfer	Check ApiVersion compatibility and provide Migration path for Kubernetes objects when upgrading Kubernetes to latest versions
4	Kube-ops-view	Kubernetes Operational View - read-only system dashboard for multiple K8s clusters
5	kubeprompt	Kubernetes prompt info
6	Metalk8s	An opinionated Kubernetes distribution with a focus on long-term on-prem deployments
7	kind	Kubernetes IN Docker - local clusters for testing Kubernetes
8	Clusterman	Cluster Autoscaler for Kubernetes and Mesos
9	Cert-manager	Automatically provision and manage TLS certificates
10	Goldilocks	Get your resource requests “Just Right”
11	katafygio	Dump, or continuously backup Kubernetes objets as yaml files in git
12	Rancher	Complete container management platform
13	Sealed Secrets	A Kubernetes controller and tool for one-way encrypted Secrets
14	OpenKruise/Kruise	Automate application workloads management on Kubernetes https://openkruise.io
15	kubectl snapshot	Take Cluster Snapshots
16	kapp	simple deployment tool focused on the concept of “Kubernetes application” — a set of resources with the same label https://get-kapp.io
17	keda	Event-driven autoscaler for Kubernetes	-
18	Octant	To better understand the complexity of Kubernetes clusters
19	Portainer	Portainer inside a Kubernetes environment
20	Gardener	Deliver fully-managed clusters at scale everywhere with your own Kubernetes-as-a-Service	-
21	xlskubectl	xlskubectl — a spreadsheet to control your Kubernetes cluster
22	Kubefirst	Fully-automated OSS delivery & infrastructure management gitops platforms
23	Kamaji	Build and operate Kubernetes at scale with a fraction of operational burden
24	kustomizer	An experimental package manager for distributing Kubernetes configuration as OCI artifacts
25	Kudo	declarative approach to building production-grade Kubernetes Operators

Cluster with Core CLI tools

Sr No	Tool Name	Description with URL
1	Bootkube	bootkube - Launch a self-hosted Kubernetes cluster
2	kubectx + kubens	Switch faster between clusters and namespaces in kubectl
3	kube-ps1	Kubernetes prompt info for Bash and Zsh
4	kube-shell	Kubernetes shell: An integrated shell for working with the Kubernetes
5	kuttle: kubectl wrapper for sshuttle without SSH	Kubernetes wrapper for sshuttle
6	kubectl sudo	Run kubernetes commands with the security privileges of another user
7	K9s	Kubernetes CLI To Manage Your Clusters In Style!
8	Ktunnel	A cli that exposes your local resources to kubernetes
9	KubeOperator	Run kubectl command in Web Browser. https://kubeoperator.io/
10	Vimkubectl	Manage any Kubernetes resource from Vim https://www.vim.org/scripts/script.ph
11	KubeHelper	KubeHelper - simplifies many daily Kubernetes cluster tasks through a web interface.
12	kubecolor	colorizes kubectl output
13	Krew	Krew is the package manager for kubectl plugins
14	Kueue	Kueue is a set of APIs and controller for job queueing
15	fubectl	Reduces repetitive interactions with kubectl
16	kube-ps1	Kubernetes prompt for bash and zsh
17	Conftest	Write tests against structured configuration data using the Open Policy Agent Rego query language
18	Kube-capacity	A CLI that provides an overview of the resource requests, limits, and utilization in a k8s cluster
19	Karpenter	Kubernetes Node Autoscaler built for flexibility, performance, and simplicity
20	Autoscaler	autoscaler Autoscaling components for Kubernetes
21	Kured	Kubernetes Reboot Daemon
22	Kube-prompt	An interactive kubernetes client featuring auto-complete
23	Click	Command Line Interactive Controller for Kubernetes
24	Kubie	A more powerful alternative to kubectx and kubens
25	Pluto	A cli tool to help discover deprecated apiVersions in Kubernetes
26	ksync	Sync files between your local system and a kubernetes cluster
27	fleet	Manage large fleets of Kubernetes clusters
28	stash	Backup your Kubernetes Stateful Applications

Alert and Monitoring

Sr No	Tool Name	Description with URL	GitHub Popularity
1	Thanos	Highly available Prometheus setup with long term storage capabilities. CNCF Sandbox project. https://thanos.io
2	Prometheus	The Prometheus monitoring system and time series database.
3	Grafana	The tool for beautiful monitoring and metric analytics & dashboards for Graphite, InfluxDB & Prometheus & More
4	Kubetail	Bash script to tail Kubernetes logs from multiple pods at the same time
5	Searchlight	Alerts for Kubernetes
6	linkerd2 Monitoring Mixin for Grafana	Grafana dashboards for linkerd2 monitoring and can work in standalone (default) or in multi cluster setup
7	kuberhaus	Kubernetes resource dashboard with node/pod layout and resource requests
8	Kubernetes Job/CronJob Notifier	This tool sends an alert to slack whenever there is a Kubernetes cronJob/Job failure/success
9	Argus	This tool monitors changes in the filesystem on specified paths	-
10	Kube-Scout	Scout for alarming issues across your Kubernetes clusters
11	Kwatch	monitor & detect crashes in your Kubernetes(K8s) cluster instantly
12	Kwatch	Monitoring, visualisation & management for Docker & Kubernetes

Logging and Tracing

Sr No	Tool Name	Description with URL
1	Jaeger	CNCF Jaeger, a Distributed Tracing Platform
2	Kiali	Kiali project, observability for the Istio service mesh
3	ELK	Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana
4	fluentbit	Fast and Lightweight Log processor and forwarder for Linux, BSD and OSX
5	Loki	Like Prometheus, but for logs
6	kubectl-mtail	tail logs from multiple pods matching label selector
7	k8spacket	packets traffic visualization for kubernetes

Troubleshooting / Debugging

Sr No	Tool Name	Description with URL
1	Monokle	Desktop unified visual tool for authoring, analysis and deployment of Kubernetes configurations
2	Kubectl-debug	Allows you to run a new container with all the troubleshooting tools installed in running pod for debugging purposed
3	PowerfulSeal	A powerful testing tool for Kubernetes clustersd
4	Crash-diagnostic	Crash-Diagnostics is a tool to help investigate, analyze, and troubleshoot unresponsive or crashed Kubernetes clustersd
5	K9s	Kubernetes CLI To Manage Your Clusters In Style!d
6	Kubernetes CLI Plugin - Doctor	kubectl cluster triage plugin for k8s - 🏥 (brew doctor equivalent)d
7	Knative Inspect	A light-weight debugging tool for Knative’s system componentsd
8	Kubeman	To find information from Kubernetes clusters, and to investigate issues related to Kubernetes and Istiod
9	kpexec	kpexec is a kubernetes cli that runs commands in a container with high privilegesd
10	Koolkits	🧰 Opinionated, language-specific, batteries-included debug container images for Kubernetes
11	kubespy	pod debugging tool for kubernetes clusters with docker runtimes

Developement Tools/Kit

Sr No	Tool Name	Description with URL	GitHub Popularity
1	Okteto: A Tool for Cloud Native Developers	Build better applications by developing and testing your code directly in Kubernetes
2	Tilt: Tilt manages local development instances for teams that deploy to Kubernetes	Local Kubernetes development with no stress
3	Garden: Kubernetes from source to finish	Development orchestrator for Kubernetes, containers and functions.
4	KuberNix	Single dependency Kubernetes clusters for local testing, experimenting and development
5	Copper	A configuration file validator for Kubernetes
6	ko	Build and deploy Go applications on Kubernetes
7	Dekorate	Java annotation processors for Kubernetes
8	Lens IDE	A powerful interface and toolkit for managing, visualizing, and interacting with multiple Kubernetes clusters	-
9	Kosko	Organize Kubernetes manifests in JavaScript	-
10	Telepresence	Fast, local development for Kubernetes and Openshift microservices	-
11	Monokle	Desktop unified visual tool for authoring, analysis and deployment of Kubernetes configurations
12	KuberEz	Graphical modeling tool for Kubernetes manifest
13	mirrord	Run your local process in the context of your cloud cluster
14	Aptakube	A modern, lightweight and multi-cluster desktop client for Kubernetes	-
15	Kubes	Kubernetes App Deploy Tool: build docker image, compile Kubernetes YAML files, and apply them
16	Kaniko	Build Container Images In Kubernetes
17	Python client for kuberenetes	Official Python client library for kubernetes
18	eclipse che IDE for k8s	The Kubernetes-Native IDE for Developer Teams
19	Kubebuilder	SDK for building Kubernetes APIs using CRDs
20	Operator-sdk	SDK for building Kubernetes applications. Provides high level APIs, useful abstractions, and project scaffolding
21	cdk8s	Kubernetes native apps and abstractions using object-oriented programming
22	Gitkube	Build and deploy docker images to Kubernetes using git push
23	Arkade	Open Source Marketplace For Kubernetes
24	k2tf	k2tf - Kubernetes YAML to Terraform HCL converters
25	Terraformer	CLI tool to generate terraform files from existing infrastructure (reverse Terraform). Infrastructure to Code
26	Atomix	A Kubernetes toolkit for building distributed applications using cloud native principles
27	Brigade	Event-driven scripting for Kubernetes
28	Spread	Docker to Kubernetes in one command
29	Kompose	convert docker compose to kubernetes resources
30	Helmfile	Declaratively deploy your Kubernetes manifests, Kustomize configs, and Charts as Helm releases. Generate all-in-one manifests for use with ArgoCD.

Alternative Tools for Developement

Sr No	Tool Name	Description with URL	GitHub Popularity
1	Minikube	minikube implements a local Kubernetes clusterd
2	KubeSphere	Easy-to-use Production Ready Container Platform https://kubesphere.io
3	skippbox	A Desktop application for k8sd
4	kind	Kubernetes IN Docker - local clusters for testing Kubernetes https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/d
5	k3d	k3d is a lightweight wrapper to run k3s (Rancher Lab’s minimal Kubernetes distribution) in docker.d	-
6	Systemk: virtual kubelet for systemd	Systemk is a systemd backend for the virtual-kubelet. Instead of starting containers, you start systemd units

CI/CD integration Tools

Sr No	Tool Name	Description with URL	GitHub Popularity
1	HybridK8s Droid	Intelligence foor your favourite Delivery Platform	-
2	Devtron	Software Delivery Workflow for Kubernetes
3	Skaffold	Easy and Repeatable Kubernetes Development
4	Apollo	Apollo - The logz.io continuous deployment solution over kubernetes
5	Helm Cabin	Web UI that visualizes Helm releases in a Kubernetes cluster
6	flagger	Progressive delivery Kubernetes operator (Canary, A/B Testing and Blue/Green deployments)
7	Kubeform	Kubernetes CRDs for Terraform providers https://kubeform.com
8	Spinnaker	Spinnaker is an open source, multi-cloud continuous delivery platform for releasing software changes with high velocity and confidence. http://www.spinnaker.io/
9	werf	GitOps tool to deliver apps to Kubernetes and integrate this process with GitLab and other CI tools
10	Flux	GitOps Kubernetes operator
11	Argo CD	Declarative continuous deployment for Kubernetes
12	Tekton	A cloud native continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) solution
13	Jenkins X	Jenkins X provides automated CI+CD for Kubernetes with Preview Environments on Pull Requests using Tekton, Knative, Lighthouse, Skaffold and Helm
14	Drone	Drone is a Container-Native, Continuous Delivery Platform
15	Helmwave	Helmwave is helm3-native tool for deploy your Helm Charts

Security Tools

Sr No	Tool Name	Description with URL	GitHub Popularity
1	Kubevious CLI	Prevent cross-manifest errors and violations of best practicees in YAML files, Helm Charts and Kubernetes clusters
2	TerraScan	Detect compliance and security violations across Infrastructure as Code to mitigate risk before provisioning cloud native infrastructure.
3	klum	Kubernetes Lazy User Manager
4	kube2iam	IAM credentials to containers running inside a kubernetes cluster based on annotations.
5	Kyverno	Kubernetes Native Policy Management https://kyverno.io
6	kiosk	kiosk office Multi-Tenancy Extension For Kubernetes - Secure Cluster Sharing & Self-Service Namespace Provisioning
7	kube-bench	CIS Kubernetes Benchmark tool
8	kube-hunter	Pentesting tool - Hunts for security weaknesses in Kubernetes clusters
9	kube-who-can	Show who has RBAC permissions to perform actions on different resources in Kubernetes
10	starboard	Kubernetes-native security toolkit
11	Simulator	Kubernetes Security Training Platform - Focussing on security mitigation
12	RBAC Lookup	Easily find roles and cluster roles attached to any user, service account, or group name in your Kubernetes cluster https://fairwinds.com
13	Kubeaudit	kubeaudit helps you audit your Kubernetes clusters against common security controls
14	Gangway	An application that can be used to easily enable authentication flows via OIDC for a kubernetes cluster
15	Audit2rbac	Autogenerate RBAC policies based on Kubernetes audit logs
16	Chartsec	Helm Chart security scanner
17	kubestriker	Security Auditing tool
18	Datree	CLI tool to prevent K8s misconfigurations by ensuring that manifests and Helm charts follow best practices as well as your organization’s policies
19	Krane	Kubernetes RBAC static Analysis & visualisation tool
20	Falco	The Falco Project - Cloud-Native runtime security	-
21	Clair	Vulnerability Static Analysis for Containers
22	M9sweeper	Complete Kubernetes Security Platform
23	Trivy	Find vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, secrets, SBOM in Kubernetes
24	kubesec	Security risk analysis for Kubernetes resources
25	Vault-k8s	First-class support for Vault and Kubernetes
26	Hardeneks	Runs checks to see if an EKS cluster follows EKS Best Practices.
27	Hubble	Network, Service & Security Observability for Kubernetes using eBPF
28	Kubeval	Validate your Kubernetes configuration files, supports multiple Kubernetes versions
29	Paralus	Paralus enables controlled, audited access to Kubernetes infrastructure and Zero trust Kubernetes with zero friction.

Network Policies

Sr No	Tool Name	Description with URL
1	Calico	Cloud native connectivity and network policy
2	kokotap	Tools for kubernetes pod network tapping
3	Submariner	Connect all your Kubernetes clusters, no matter where they are in the world
4	egress-operator	An operator to produce egress gateway pods and control access to them with network policies
5	kubefwd (Kube Forward)	Bulk port forwarding Kubernetes services for local development
6	Kilo (k8s + wg)	A multi-cloud network overlay built on WireGuard and designed for Kubernetes

Testing Tools

Sr No	Tool Name	Description with URL	GitHub Popularity
1	Testkube	Kubernetes-native testing framework for testers and developers
2	k6d	A modern load testing tool, using Go and JavaScript
3	Network bandwith and load testingd -	Test suite for Kubernetes
4	test-infrad	Test infrastructure for the Kubernetes project
5	kube-scored	Kubernetes object analysis with recommendations for improved reliability and security
6	Litmusd	Cloud-Native Chaos Engineering; Kubernetes-Native Chaos Engineering; Chaos Engineering for Kubernetes
7	PowerfulSeald	A powerful testing tool for Kubernetes clusters
8	kube-burnerd	Kube-burner is a tool aimed at stressing kubernetes clusters	-
9	Tracetest	Generate end-to-end and integration tests automatically from your OpenTelemetry traces
10	Microcks	Kubernetes native tool for mocking and testing API and micro-services

Service Mesh

Sr No	Tool Name	Description with URL	GitHub Popularity
1	Istio	Connect, secure, control, and observe services
2	Traefik	The Cloud Native Edge Router
3	NGINX Ingress Controller	NGINX and NGINX Plus Ingress Controllers for Kubernetes
4	Autopilot	THE SERVICE MESH SDK	-
5	linkerd-config	A Kubernetes controller that knows how to reconcile the Linkerd configuration
6	Kong	Kong for Kubernetes: the official Ingress Controller for Kubernetes
7	OSM	Open Service Mesh (OSM) is a lightweight, extensible, cloud native service mesh
8	Layer5	Layer5, the service mesh company, representing every service mesh
9	Gloo Mesh	The Service Mesh Orchestration Platform
10	APISIX	Apache APISIX is a dynamic, real-time, high-performance API gateway.
11	Contour	High performance ingress controller for Kubernetes	-
12	Kusk Gateway	OpenAPI-driven Ingress Controller for Kubernetes	-

Observability

Sr No	Tool Name	Description with URL	GitHub Popularity
1	Kubespy	Tools for observing Kubernetes resources in real time
2	Popeye	A Kubernetes cluster resource sanitizer
3	Stern	Multi pod and container log tailing for Kubernetes
4	Cri-tools	CLI and validation tools for Kubelet Container Runtime Interface (CRI)
5	Kubebox	Terminal and Web console for Kubernetes
6	Kubewatch	Watch k8s events and trigger Handlers
7	kube-state-metrics	Add-on agent to generate and expose cluster-level metrics
8	Sloop	Kubernetes History Visualization
9	kubectl tree 🎄	Kubectl plugin to observe object hierarchies through ownerReferences
10	chaoskube	chaoskube periodically kills random pods in your Kubernetes cluster
11	BotKube	Helps you monitor your Kubernetes cluster(s), debug critical deployments and gives recommendations for standard practices	-
12	Kubestone	Kubestone is a benchmarking Operator that can evaluate the performance of Kubernetes installations	-
13	Chaos Mesh	A Chaos Engineering Platform for Kubernetes
14	Lemur	LEMUR: Observability and Context
15	kubernetes-event-exporter	Export Kubernetes events to multiple destinations with routing and filtering
16	Kubevious	Kubevious is an app-centric assurance, validation, and introspection platform for Kubernetes	-
17	OpenTelemetry	High-quality, ubiquitous, and portable telemetry to enable effective observability	-
18	Grafana Tempo	Grafana Tempo is a high volume, minimal dependency distributed tracing backend
19	Tracetest	Generate end-to-end and integration tests automatically from your OpenTelemetry traces
20	Pumba	Chaos testing, network emulation, and stress testing tool for containers
21	Robusta	Kubernetes observability and automation, with an awesome Prometheus integration

Machine Learning/Deep Learning

Sr No	Tool Name	Description with URL
1	Nos	nos is an open-source platform to efficiently run AI workloads on Kubernetes, increasing GPU utilization and reducing infrastructure and operational costs
2	Kubeflow	Machine Learning Toolkit for Kubernetes
3	Volcano	A Kubernetes Native Batch System

Compute Edge Tools

Sr No	Tool Name	Description with URL
1	KubeEdge	Kubernetes Native Edge Computing Framework
2	OpenYurt	Extending your native Kubernetes to edge
3	Akri	A Kubernetes Resource Interface for the Edge
4	SuperEdge	An edge-native container management system for edge computing
5	Keylime	A CNCF Project to Bootstrap & Maintain Trust on the Edge / Cloud and IoT
6	Microk8s	A small, fast, single-package Kubernetes for developers, IoT and edge
7	Shifu	Kubernetes native IoT software development framework
8	kairos	The immutable Linux meta-distribution for edge Kubernetes

Kubernetes Tools for Specific Cloud

Sr No	Tool Name	Description with URL	GitHub Popularity
1	Kubernetes on AWS (kube-aws)	A command-line tool to declaratively manage Kubernetes clusters on AWS
2	Draft: Streamlined Kubernetes Development	A tool for developers to create cloud-native applications on Kubernetes
3	helm-ssm	A low dependency tool for retrieving and injecting secrets from AWS SSM into Helm
4	Skupper	Multicloud communication for Kubernetes	-
5	AWS workshop for kubernetes	AWS workshop for kubernetes
6	Sealos	A Kubernetes distribution, a general-purpose Cloud Operating System designed for managing cloud-native applications
7	Porter	Kubernetes-powered PaaS that runs in your own cloud.
8	Kubicorn	Create, manage, snapshot, and scale Kubernetes infrastructure in the public cloud

Storage Providers

Sr No	Tool Name	Description with URL
1	ChubaoFS	distributed file system and object storage
2	Longhorn	Cloud-Native distributed block storage built on and for Kubernetes
3	OpenEBS	Kubernetes native - hyperconverged block storage with multiple storage engines
4	Rook	Storage Orchestration for Kubernetes
5	SeaweedFS	Distributed file system supports read-write many volumes
6	TiKV	Distributed transactional key-value database
7	TopoLVM	Capacity-aware CSI plugin for Kubernetes
8	velero	Backup and migrate Kubernetes applications and their persistent volumes
9	Vitess	Vitess is a database clustering system for horizontal scaling of MySQL
10	kaDalu	A lightweight Persistent storage solution for Kubernetes / OpenShift using GlusterFS in background

Multiple Tools Repo

Sr No	Tool Name	Description with URL
1	Chaos Toolkit Kubernetes Support	Kubernetes driver extension of the Chaos Toolkit probes and actions API
2	k14s	Kubernetes Tools that follow Unix philosophy to be simple and composable
3	Pulumi	Pulumi - Modern Infrastructure as Code. Any cloud, any language. Give your team cloud superpowers rocket https://www.pulumi.com
4	Gvisor	Application Kernel for Containers
5	Colima	Container runtimes on macOS (and Linux) with minimal setup
6	Krateo Platformops	Open source platform to manage infrastructure, resources and applications via YAML files

Cost Optimisation

Sr No	Tool Name	Description with URL	GitHub Popularity
1	Kubecost	Cross-cloud cost allocation models for workloads running on Kubernetes
2	PerfectScale	Reduce Kubernetes costs while improving performance and resilience with data-driven intelligence built for continuous optimization	-
3	OpenCost	OpenCost — your favorite open source cost monitoring tool for Kubernetes

Function as a Service FaaS

Sr No	Tool Name	Description with URL
1	Knative Serving	Kubernetes-based, scale-to-zero, request-driven compute
2	OpenFaaS	OpenFaaS - Serverless Functions Made Simple
3	Kubeless	Kubernetes Native Serverless Framework
4	Fission	Fast and Simple Serverless Functions for Kubernetes
5	Nuclio	High-Performance Serverless event and data processing platform

Non-Categorize

Sr No	Tool Name	Description with URL	GitHub Popularity
1	Rudr	A Kubernetes implementation of the Open Application Model specification
2	Keel	Kubernetes Operator to automate Helm, DaemonSet, StatefulSet & Deployment updates	-
3	Cabin, the mobile app for Kubernetes -	The Mobile Dashboard for Kubernetes
4	Funktion	CLI tool for working with funktion
5	Alterant	A simple Kubernetes configuration modifier
6	BUCK	Brigade Universal Controller for Kubernetes
7	kube-fledged	A kubernetes add-on for creating and managing a cache of container images directly on the cluster worker nodes, so application pods start almost instantly
8	kpt	toolkit to help you manage, manipulate, customize, and apply Kubernetes Resource configuration
9	capsule	Capsule helps to implement a multi-tenancy and policy-based environment in your Kubernetes cluster
10	KubeSlice	KubeSlice enables Kubernetes pods and services to communicate seamlessly across clusters, clouds, edges, and data centers by creating logical application boundaries known as Slices
11	routernetes	Use Kubernetes to make a home router!
12	Symbiosis	Symbiosis is a cloud service provider optimized for Kubernetes. Launch clusters in <2 min with better tools and lower costs	-