The user-friendly K9s alternative you've been looking for

Looking for an alternative to K9s? Tired of working on a terminal? Aptakube is a user-friendly, rich and interactive Kubernetes GUI that runs on your desktop.

Aptakube demonstrating its multi-cluster functionality, quick actions and aggregated logs.

If you're looking for an alternative to K9s, here's a short comparison between Aptakube and K9s.

AptakubeK9s
Tech StackTauri, Rust and SolidGo
User InterfaceGUI (Graphical)TUI (Terminal)
App Disk Size124 MB63 MB
Time to Interactive1Time taken to get past the splash screen⚡️ Instantly⚡️ Instantly
User friendly viewRicher insights beyond just YAML views-
Memory Usage @ Home1How much memory was used when the app started73 MB20 MB
Memory Usage @ 3000 Pods1How much memory was used to list 3000 pods218 MB275 MB
Multi-clusterAbility to connect to multiple clusters simultaneously-
Aggregated Log ViewerView logs from multiple pods at once

Conclusion

K9s is a popular choice to interact with Kubernetes directly from the terminal. From a feature point of view, Aptakube and K9s are very similar, but Aptakube has an advantage on its multi-cluster capability, richer resource views and aggregated log viewer.

From a performance perspective, you'd be surprised to know that they both perform fairly equally. The exception being that K9s doesn't seem to be very optimized for larger number of resources in terms of memory usage.

Choose Aptakube if you're looking for a user-friendly, rich and interactive experience. Being a commercial product means that it's actively maintained and supported. Download and see for yourself 😉

K9s is best for those looking for a free option or prefer working on a terminal.


  1. Tested on a MacBook Pro 16" 2021 M1 Pro 16GB, running macOS Ventura 13.0.
  • Aptakube 1.4.0
  • K9s 0.27.3

If you notice any inaccuracies, please let us know at hello@aptakube.com.

Last updated: April 14, 2023.

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Screenshot of Aptakube showing a list of pods from 2 clusters in a single view