14 Best Kubernetes Tools in 2025
Kubernetes (K8s) is flexible, scalable and powerful, but without the right tools, running it in production environments can quickly turn into chaos.
The good news is that the Kubernetes ecosystem is packed with tools that make your life easier. These tools aim to simplify deployments, implement compliance and governance, monitor your clusters, and even enable you to implement multi-tenant environments.
As there are too many options to choose from, we’ve put together a list of the top tools you should know about in 2025, and how they improve your overall Kubernetes management.
Challenges of Managing Kubernetes Without Tools
Kubernetes provides a powerful foundation for orchestrating your containers, but its learning curve and vast ecosystem can create significant issues for teams that are trying to use it without supporting tools.
One of the biggest challenges of managing Kubernetes is deploying resources, especially at scale. If you are rolling out applications across multiple environments, and keeping workloads consistent, these processes can quickly become overwhelming when done without a supporting tool. If you make even a small mistake, there can be outages or broken services.
Another big challenge is managing multiple Kubernetes clusters at the same time. You will need to constantly switch contexts, use multiple kubectl commands to get information on what is happening, and keep track of your workloads across environments. This process is error-prone and it will slow down incident response. This challenge ties into monitoring and debugging at scale. The enormous amounts of logs, events, and metrics Kubernetes generates, makes identifying the root cause of failures or performance issues hard to identify.
Teams also struggle with security, governance, and compliance. Your clusters will be exposed to vulnerabilities due to misconfigured permissions, insecure container images, or lack of proper auditing. Without using the right tools for this job, you will have a hard time keeping your applications up and running, and you will put your organization at legal and financial risk.
If you want to see how to fix the most common Kubernetes errors, check out this article.
Service to service communication can be also hard to implement without having the right tools in place, and you will keep wondering why it is not working, and what you can do to fix it. Kubernetes provides basic networking, but achieving reliable, and secure communication between microservices requires additional layers of tooling.
Without solving these challenges with the right tools, your organization risks slowing down innovation, and creates fragile systems that are difficult to maintain.
Top 14 Kubernetes Tools
Selecting the right tools will always depend on your use cases, budget, and the amount of support you need to receive to reach your goals. You should always evaluate different options and explore which ones work best for you.
This list includes:
1. Kubectl
2. Helm
3. Kustomize
5. ArgoCD
6. FluxCD
7. K0s
8. K0smotron
10. Prometheus/Grafana
12. Krew
13. Kind
14. Kubecost
TL;DR?
1. Kubectl
You can’t be using Kubernetes without leveraging kubectl. It is a command-line tool that lets you easily interact with your cluster by helping you deploy K8s resources, checking their logs, connecting to your pods, scaling them, and much more.
It is not the most glamorous tool, but it has a lot of capabilities, making K8s management easier. Every tool in this list builds on top of kubectl one way or the other. If you are just starting out with Kubernetes, make sure you spend some time understanding what you can do with kubectl and how it helps with your workflows, and take advantage of its detailed documentation.
The majority of kubectl power users set different aliases for some of the most important commands, to ensure they type less, and they also leverage kubectl autocomplete to speed up their work:
alias k=”kubectl”
alias kg=”kubectl get”
alias kd=”kubectl describe”
2. Helm
You should think of Helm as your Kubernetes package manager. It helps you package your applications into “Charts”, and lets you deploy something like NGINX or Wordpress with a single command instead of you needing to write 200 lines of YAML.
It can also be compared with a Terraform/OpenTofu module, as it encapsulates the logic of your Kubernetes applications, and based on the inputs it receives during the installation of the chart, it can deploy different components, and it can leverage different values.
Helm has to be installed separately, but the process is pretty straightforward. There are many Helm charts publicly available, so before reinventing the wheel, you should check to see if what you want to build is already out there.
The best part about Helm is the fact that it also handles upgrades and rollbacks, so if your latest deployment crashes your applications, rolling back is a single command away.
3. Kustomize
If you don’t like Helm’s templating approach, you don’t need to worry, as K8s has Kustomize which offers a different route.
Instead of creating templates as you would do with Helm, Kustomize lets you build overlays on top of existing manifests. This means that you can keep one base configuration and apply environment specific configurations for your different environments.
It’s built into kubectl, so you don’t need to install anything, and to run it, you will simply provide the -k flag to kubectl apply.
Helm can feel like ordering takeout, while Kustomize is like cooking at home, with all the ingredients already prepared: you just need to mix them together.
4. Lens Kubernetes IDE
Lens Kubernetes IDE is the most popular Kubernetes IDE that gives you an easy way to manage your Kubernetes workflows.
It is a desktop application that gives you a full graphical view of your clusters: nodes, pods, services, logs, events, and others. Switching between clusters is just one click away inside of Lens K8s IDE. It offers out of the box Helm and CRDs integrations, making it easy to manage all the charts and custom resources you install in your clusters.
With the AWS EKS integration, you can easily connect all your EKS clusters to Lens, without having to run multiple aws commands to get their kubeconfigs.
To speed the debugging process, and get actionable solutions on how to solve your issues, Lens K8s IDE offers an AI copilot called Lens Prism, that makes your life easier.
If you want to learn more about Lens Kubernetes IDE, check out this article.
5. ArgoCD
ArgoCD is a continuous delivery (CD) product that helps you implement GitOps inside your Kubernetes clusters, ensuring that Git is your single source of truth for your K8s resources.
It continuously syncs your cluster with your repositories, offering a CLI and a powerful UI to see what’s deployed, and also gives you the ability to roll back your changes. This transforms your deployments into something that is predictable, rather than being hopeful.
ArgoCD is just one piece of the Argo ecosystem, as the project has other tools that work beautifully with it:
- Argo Workflows – Helps you run complex workflows on Kubernetes, offering a K8s-native way to do Continuous Integration (CI) pipelines
- Argo Rollouts – Helps you implement blue/green and canary deployments
- Argo Events – Helps you trigger workflows or deployments based on external events (Git push/webhooks)
6. FluxCD
If the commitment to ArgoCD feels too much for you, there’s always Flux. It doesn’t come with a UI, but it’s lightweight, fast, and integrates easily with Kubernetes native workflows. FluxCD keeps your cluster state in sync with Git, just like ArgoCD does, but with a more minimalist philosophy.
And just like ArgoCD, Flux is just one piece of the ecosystem. If you pair with some of these tools, it can be as powerful as Argo:
- Flagger – Brings progressive delivery strategies to Flux: canary, blue/green, and even A/B testing
- Notification Controller – Integrates easily with Slack, Teams, or email, and you get real time updates about your Flux deployments and syncs
- Helm and Kustomize Controllers – Declaratively manage Helm charts and Kustomize overlays as part of your Flux GitOps workflow
7. K0s
Not all of your projects require the full overhead of a massive Kubernetes distribution. Sometimes you need something that’s lightweight, secure, and fast to install.
K0s is a zero-friction Kubernetes distribution that runs as a single binary that works on any infrastructure: bare-metal, on-premises, edge, IoT, public and private clouds.
It is CNCF-certified, completely free for personal and commercial use, and it will always be.
8. K0smotron
K0smotron lets you run Kubernetes clusters inside Kubernetes, and yes, there is no typo here. It is amazing for multi-tenant environments, or managing lots of ephemeral clusters (e.g. you can spin-up test clusters on demand from your CI/CD pipelines).
It uses the operator pattern, so you can create and manage new clusters just by applying YAML as you would normally do in Kubernetes.
If you ever wanted to manage Kubernetes clusters as easily as you manage pods, k0smotron is your dream tool.
9. OPA GateKeeper
Sometimes Kubernetes can be too flexible, and without guardrails anyone can deploy anything. This can easily transform into a recipe for disaster.
OPA Gatekeeper can enforce rules like:
- Don’t use the latest image tag
- Only pull images from trusted registries
- Ensure your resources have labels
- Ensure there are no privileged containers
If you try to skip the rules you set up when you apply your Kubernetes resources, your request will automatically be denied.
When you are running Kubernetes in an enterprise, OPA Gatekeeper is essential.
10. Prometheus and Grafana
You know what’s even worse than seeing your Kubernetes clusters crashing? Not understanding why they crashed.
Prometheus and Grafana are non-negotiable in the Kubernetes world. With Prometheus you scrape metrics from your cluster, and with Grafana you can visualize them in powerful dashboards.
Issues related to CPU, memory, API, and others will be easily captured by these two. Adding in AlertManager will get you notified before everything is down.
Without this stack, running Kubernetes in production is going to be a rough ride.
11. Istio/Linkerd
Microservices are powerful, until you have to manage traffic between them. This can easily transform into a nightmare.
Service meshes like Istio and Linkerd handle traffic routing, retries, encryption and observability for you. Istio is feature-rich and more complex, while Linkerd is more lightweight and simple.
Both these services meshes add reliability and security to your service-to-service communication, and without them, this communication would simply be chaos.
12. Krew
Kubectl on its own is very powerful, but you saw in the beginning that many people are leveraging aliases for making management easier, and that it also lacks some things you might expect out of the box.
Krew is a plugin manager for kubectl that opens the door to a whole new ecosystem of extra commands:
- Do you need to switch contexts faster? There is a plugin for that: ctx
- Need to switch your namespaces faster? There is a plugin for that: ns
- Tired of typing long resource names? You guessed it, there is a plugin for that: alias
As soon as you start using these plugins, you will start to wonder why you used plain kubectl alone.
13. Kind
Kubernetes in Docker (Kind) lets you run Kubernetes inside Docker containers, making it a perfect choice for local development, CI pipelines, or experimenting without making a lot of cloud cost.
It is lightweight, fast, and disposable, making it an ideal choice for developers that want to get hands-on experience with Kubernetes, without introducing cloud complexity.
14. Kubecost
Kubecost helps you track, allocate, and optimize how much you spend for Kubernetes. If you want to know how much your environments cost per month, or which teams are burning through the most resources, the Kubecost is for you, as it will show you all this data in real time.
Kubecost can also help you identify potential saving options, which means that you are not only watching your money disappear: you get actual insights on how to stop it.
Managed Kubernetes Services
Many organizations choose to offload their cluster management to cloud providers or enterprise platforms. By leveraging these services, you will simplify operations, reduce the administrative burden, and leverage strong integrations in their respective ecosystems. Here are some of the most popular Kubernetes managed services:
- Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Services (EKS) – Fully managed services on AWS that has a deep integration with IAM, CloudWatch, and Fargate. If you want to learn how to manage AWS EKS at scale, check out this article.
- Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) – Provides seamless scaling, built-in security and strong support for hybrid/multi-cloud workloads
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) – Microsoft’s Kubernetes offering integrates tightly into Azure AD, enterprise governance, and DevOps tooling
- Oracle Kubernetes Engine (OKE) – Oracle’s managed Kubernetes platform focuses on performance, security, and enterprise-grade support.
Beyond public cloud providers, there are also solutions like Mirantis Kubernetes Engine (MKE) which gives you the freedom to run Kubernetes across any infrastructure (on-prem, cloud, hybrid, edge).
For many teams, these services and enterprise solutions provide the best of both worlds: simplified operations combined with the flexibility to layer on specialized tools for monitoring, policy enforcement, and optimization.
Honorable mentions
While all the above tools will help you improve your Kubernetes workflows, the ecosystem is far richer. Here are some additional tools worth mentioning, that you can look into and see if they equip you with what you need to be even more successful when managing Kubernetes:
- Kyverno: Kubernetes native policy management tool that uses YAML to define policies
- Calico: Network security solution that provides policy driven for your Kubernetes workloads
- Trivy: Security vulnerability scanner for your container images, Kubernetes configurations, and Infrastructure as Code file
- Cilium: Advanced networking and security solutions for fine-grained observability and traffic control
- Velero: Helps you implement backup, restore, and disaster recovery for Kubernetes clusters and persistent volumes
- Falco: Detects anomalies in your runtime behavior inside Kubernetes workloads
- Minikube: Helps you run Kubernetes locally for testing and development
- Jaeger: Distributed tracing system that helps monitor and troubleshoot microservices
- Harbor: Container registry with vulnerability scanning, content signing, and role-based access control
Future of Kubernetes Tooling
Kubernetes is constantly evolving, and so is its ecosystem. In the near future, as so many companies are betting on AI/ML, we can expect that AI-powered automation will become a cornerstone of Kubernetes. As AIs mature, they will allow clusters to resolve common issues automatically, reducing manual intervention, and thus improving reliability.
We can also expect security tooling to advance, especially because there has been a rise of supply chain attacks. This will increase the compliance requirements, and organizations will rely on tools that provide automated vulnerability scanning, zero-trust policies, and advanced runtime security. Shifting-left will accelerate Kubernetes adoption in industries like finance, healthcare, and government.
As organizations require more and more Kubernetes clusters, cost transparency and optimizations especially in multi-cloud and hybrid setups will become non-negotiable. For sure there will be more tools designed to provide granular insights into spending and automatically recommending optimizations.
A final prediction would be that we will see more Kubernetes clusters into edge computing and IoT. Using K8s in this kind of environments will introduce a new set of challenges from limited resources to connectivity, so we should expect future tools that will make it efficient in them.
Key points
Kubernetes is powerful on its own, but it can be really complicated without the proper tools around. The tools mentioned in this article don't just reduce Kubernetes complexity, they make it practical for real-world usage.
If you are just starting out with Kubernetes, we suggest that you start with Kubectl, Helm, Lens Kubernetes IDE, Kind, Prometheus/Grafana, and ArgoCD right away. Once you get more comfortable, add other tools such as OPA for compliance, Kubecost for cost control, and take a look at Flux for an Argo alternative. If you need to manage a lot of clusters, or running lean Kubernetes, make sure you take advantage of k0s and k0smotron, as they will save you a lot of hassle.
Kubernetes is modular, so you don’t need to use everything at once. Start with what solves your pain today, and grow your stack as your needs evolve.
If you want to take your Kubernetes game to the next level, download Lens today.