ktop is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

A top-like tool for your Kubernetes cluster metrics

What is ktop written in?

ktop is primarily written in Go. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/vladimirvivien/ktop, and it has 1,109 GitHub stars.

ktop: Open Source Monitoring & Observability

ktop is a free, open source monitoring & observability project written in Go and released under Apache-2.0. It has 1,109 GitHub stars, 25 forks and 11 open issues, and was last pushed 3 months ago. On this registry it ranks #216 of 271 tracked projects in Monitoring & Observability, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available.

A top-like tool for your Kubernetes cluster.

Following the tradition of Unix/Linux top tools, ktop is a tool that displays useful metrics information about nodes, pods, and other workload resources running in a Kubernetes cluster.

Features

Real-Time Monitoring - Continuously updated view of nodes, pods, and containers
Drill-Down Navigation - Explore from cluster overview → node → pod → container logs
Zero Cluster Installation - Runs locally using your kubeconfig; no agents or server-side components
Works Anywhere kubectl Works - Connects through the Kubernetes API; no direct node access required
Streaming Container Logs - Real-time logs with filtering, timestamps, line wrap, and full-screen mode
Multiple Metrics Sources - Support Prometheus for enhanced metrics, Metrics-Server, or no-metrics as fallback
Graceful Degradation - Works even without metrics infrastructure by showing resource requests/limits
Single Binary - Download and run; no dependencies beyond a valid kubeconfig

Installation

kubectl plugin

kubectl krew install ktop
kubectl ktop

Requires krew plugin manager.

Homebrew

brew tap vladimirvivien/oss-tools
brew install ktop

Go install

go install github.com/vladimirvivien/ktop@latest

Binary download

Download from GitHub Releases.

Quick Start

With a valid kubeconfig file ($KUBECONFIG or ~/.kube/config):

# Start ktop with default settings
ktop

# Use a specific context
ktop --context my-cluster

# Filter to a namespace
ktop --namespace production

# Use Prometheus for enhanced metrics
ktop --metrics-source=prometheus

Documentation

See ktop's website for documetation.