K9s vs Lens

Overview

K9s

Stacks75

Followers103

Votes2

GitHub Stars31.7K

Forks2.0K

Lens

Stacks151

Followers183

Votes9

GitHub Stars23.0K

Forks1.5K

K9s vs Lens: What are the differences?

K9s and Lens are both Kubernetes management tools providing graphical user interfaces for cluster management. Let's explore the key differences between them:

User Interface: K9s provides a terminal-based user interface, making it ideal for those who prefer command-line interactions. On the other hand, Lens provides a graphical user interface (GUI), offering a more visually intuitive experience for managing Kubernetes clusters.
Feature Set: K9s focuses on providing a comprehensive set of features for monitoring and managing Kubernetes clusters, including real-time resource monitoring, logs, and interactive commands. In contrast, Lens offers additional features such as a powerful built-in terminal, integrated cluster inspector, and workload management capabilities.
Extensibility: K9s allows users to extend its functionality by utilizing plugins and integrating with other tools, enabling customization and integration with existing workflows. Lens, on the other hand, doesn't provide the same level of extensibility and plugin support, limiting customization options.
Cloud Provider Integration: K9s offers seamless integration with various cloud providers, enabling easy navigation and management of Kubernetes clusters across different cloud environments. In comparison, Lens provides limited support for cloud provider integration, focusing more on offering a universal management solution for Kubernetes clusters.
Resource Usage: K9s is a lightweight tool that consumes fewer system resources, making it suitable for low-resource environments or when working remotely. Lens, on the other hand, has a higher resource footprint due to its graphical nature, requiring more system resources to run efficiently.
Learning Curve: K9s, being mainly terminal-based, has a steeper learning curve for users who are unfamiliar with command-line interfaces. In contrast, Lens provides a more user-friendly interface, requiring less technical expertise to navigate and manage Kubernetes clusters.

In summary, K9s provides a terminal-based interface with extensive customization options and cloud provider integration, while Lens offers a graphical interface with additional features and a more user-friendly experience.

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CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Detailed Comparison

K9s	Lens
K9s provides a curses based terminal UI to interact with your Kubernetes clusters. The aim of this project is to make it easier to navigate, observe and manage your applications in the wild. K9s continually watches Kubernetes for changes and offers subsequent commands to interact with observed resources.	It is the only IDE you’ll ever need to take control of your Kubernetes clusters. It is a standalone application for MacOS, Windows and Linux operating systems. It is open source and free.
-	Multi Cluster Management; Multiple Workspaces; Built-In Prometheus Stats; Built-in Helm Applications Management; Context Aware Terminal;
Statistics
GitHub Stars 31.7K	GitHub Stars 23.0K
GitHub Forks 2.0K	GitHub Forks 1.5K
Stacks 75	Stacks 151
Followers 103	Followers 183
Votes 2	Votes 9
Pros & Cons
Pros 2 Nice UI and fast way to manage my kubernetes clusters	Pros 4 Keep track of cluster changes 2 Open Source 2 Easy management of multiple clusters 1 Local installation, not SaaS
Integrations
Kubernetes	Kubernetes Linux macOS Windows

What are some alternatives to K9s, Lens?

Kubernetes

Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users declared intentions.

Rancher

Rancher is an open source container management platform that includes full distributions of Kubernetes, Apache Mesos and Docker Swarm, and makes it simple to operate container clusters on any cloud or infrastructure platform.

Docker Compose

With Compose, you define a multi-container application in a single file, then spin your application up in a single command which does everything that needs to be done to get it running.

Docker Swarm

Swarm serves the standard Docker API, so any tool which already communicates with a Docker daemon can use Swarm to transparently scale to multiple hosts: Dokku, Compose, Krane, Deis, DockerUI, Shipyard, Drone, Jenkins... and, of course, the Docker client itself.

Tutum

Tutum lets developers easily manage and run lightweight, portable, self-sufficient containers from any application. AWS-like control, Heroku-like ease. The same container that a developer builds and tests on a laptop can run at scale in Tutum.

Portainer

It is a universal container management tool. It works with Kubernetes, Docker, Docker Swarm and Azure ACI. It allows you to manage containers without needing to know platform-specific code.

Codefresh

Automate and parallelize testing. Codefresh allows teams to spin up on-demand compositions to run unit and integration tests as part of the continuous integration process. Jenkins integration allows more complex pipelines.

CAST.AI

It is an AI-driven cloud optimization platform for Kubernetes. Instantly cut your cloud bill, prevent downtime, and 10X the power of DevOps.

k3s

Certified Kubernetes distribution designed for production workloads in unattended, resource-constrained, remote locations or inside IoT appliances. Supports something as small as a Raspberry Pi or as large as an AWS a1.4xlarge 32GiB server.

Flocker

Flocker is a data volume manager and multi-host Docker cluster management tool. With it you can control your data using the same tools you use for your stateless applications. This means that you can run your databases, queues and key-value stores in Docker and move them around as easily as the rest of your app.

Related Comparisons

K9s vs Lens: What are the differences?

K9s and Lens are both Kubernetes management tools providing graphical user interfaces for cluster management. Let's explore the key differences between them:

User Interface: K9s provides a terminal-based user interface, making it ideal for those who prefer command-line interactions. On the other hand, Lens provides a graphical user interface (GUI), offering a more visually intuitive experience for managing Kubernetes clusters.
Feature Set: K9s focuses on providing a comprehensive set of features for monitoring and managing Kubernetes clusters, including real-time resource monitoring, logs, and interactive commands. In contrast, Lens offers additional features such as a powerful built-in terminal, integrated cluster inspector, and workload management capabilities.
Extensibility: K9s allows users to extend its functionality by utilizing plugins and integrating with other tools, enabling customization and integration with existing workflows. Lens, on the other hand, doesn't provide the same level of extensibility and plugin support, limiting customization options.
Cloud Provider Integration: K9s offers seamless integration with various cloud providers, enabling easy navigation and management of Kubernetes clusters across different cloud environments. In comparison, Lens provides limited support for cloud provider integration, focusing more on offering a universal management solution for Kubernetes clusters.
Resource Usage: K9s is a lightweight tool that consumes fewer system resources, making it suitable for low-resource environments or when working remotely. Lens, on the other hand, has a higher resource footprint due to its graphical nature, requiring more system resources to run efficiently.
Learning Curve: K9s, being mainly terminal-based, has a steeper learning curve for users who are unfamiliar with command-line interfaces. In contrast, Lens provides a more user-friendly interface, requiring less technical expertise to navigate and manage Kubernetes clusters.

K9s vs Lens

Overview