K3s Has a Free API — Lightweight Kubernetes in 40MB

K3s is a certified Kubernetes distribution in a single 40MB binary. Perfect for edge, IoT, ARM, and development — fully compatible with standard Kubernetes.

What Is K3s?

K3s is Kubernetes stripped down to the essentials. It uses SQLite instead of etcd by default and includes a built-in load balancer, ingress, and storage.

Features:

• Single binary (40MB)
• Certified Kubernetes
• SQLite, etcd, MySQL, PostgreSQL backends
• Built-in Traefik ingress
• ARM64 and ARMv7 support
• Auto-TLS

Quick Start

# Install K3s (30 seconds)
curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sh -

# Check it works
kubectl get nodes

Kubernetes API

# All standard kubectl commands work
kubectl create deployment nginx --image=nginx
kubectl expose deployment nginx --port=80 --type=LoadBalancer
kubectl get pods
kubectl get services

# REST API
curl -k https://localhost:6443/api/v1/namespaces/default/pods \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $(cat /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/token)"

Use Cases

1. Edge computing — Kubernetes on resource-constrained devices
2. IoT — manage containers on ARM devices
3. Development — local Kubernetes cluster
4. CI/CD — disposable clusters for testing
5. Homelab — Kubernetes on Raspberry Pi

K3s vs Standard Kubernetes

Feature	K3s	kubeadm K8s
Binary size	40MB	300MB+
Memory	512MB	2GB+
Install time	30 sec	30 min
Certified	Yes	Yes
ARM support	Native	Manual

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