For years there were two answers to "how do I look at my cluster without typing kubectl". You deployed kubernetes-dashboard, or you installed Lens. Both answers expired.
The Dashboard repository was archived on 21 January 2026. The notice at the top of its README is short:
This project is now archived and no longer maintained due to lack of active maintainers and contributors.
The same README names its successor: Headlamp, "an easy-to-use and extensible Kubernetes web UI". The last release, 7.14.0, is from October 2025 and still installs fine. It is also a piece of software with a service account in your cluster and nobody shipping security fixes for it.
Lens did not die, it went up-market. The old k8slens.dev now redirects to lenshq.io, where the Personal tier is still free "for students, hobbyists, and engineers at small organizations" - with a footnote that organizations above $10 million in annual revenue or funding need a paid plan after a 30-day evaluation. Paid means $25 per seat per month on an annual subscription, $30 month-to-month, and $50 per seat for Enterprise. Lens Desktop also wants a Lens ID: it activates against an account, with a downloadable activation code as the documented path for air-gapped machines.
So: one option is unmaintained, the other asks for a credit card and a login. Here is what is actually left, and what each one costs on your machine.
The shortlist
| Version | License | Who maintains it | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| k9s | 0.51.0 | Apache-2.0 |
derailed/k9s, ~35k stars |
free |
| Headlamp | 0.46.0 | Apache-2.0 |
kubernetes-sigs, SIG UI; in the CNCF since 2023 at Sandbox level |
free |
| FreeLens | 2.0.0 | MIT |
freelensapp community project |
free |
| Lens Desktop | current | proprietary | LensHQ | free Personal with limits, $25-60/seat/mo |
| Dashboard | 7.14.0 | Apache-2.0 | archived 21.01.2026 | free, unmaintained |
Two of those are the interesting ones. Headlamp is the project the Dashboard itself points at, it lives under kubernetes-sigs, and it runs either as a desktop app or inside the cluster behind a browser. FreeLens is the community continuation of OpenLens - the open-source core that Lens built on before the product moved behind an account; the name OpenLens still appears about three thousand times in its source. It ships as a standalone desktop app under MIT, with no account anywhere.
And k9s, which is not a GUI at all. It is a terminal UI, which turns out to matter more than it sounds.
What they cost before they show you anything
We installed all three on one Linux x86-64 machine, pointed them at the same cluster - Kubernetes 1.33.1, 47 pods across all namespaces - and measured.
| Download | On disk | Processes | RSS | PSS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| k9s | 41 MB | 127 MB | 1 | 105 MB | 105 MB |
| Headlamp desktop | 150 MB | 404 MB | 7 | 747 MB | 379 MB |
| FreeLens | 157 MB | 588 MB | 6 | 765 MB | 428 MB |
Two numbers for memory, because for Electron apps only one of them is honest. RSS counts every page resident for every process in the tree, so the shared Chromium libraries get counted six or seven times over. PSS divides shared pages among the processes that use them, which is the number that actually reflects what the app takes away from the rest of your machine. For k9s the two are identical, because k9s is one process.
Read the PSS column again: the two desktop apps cost 380-430 MB before they display a single pod. Those measurements were taken at the launch screen - Headlamp on its cluster list, FreeLens on its welcome page - with the kubeconfig loaded and nothing opened yet. k9s was measured with the full pod list of all 47 pods on screen and refreshing.
That is the Electron baseline, and it is not a criticism of either project: it is the cost of shipping a browser engine with your application. It is simply a cost you should know about before you leave one open on a laptop all day next to your IDE.
The same tool, in the cluster, for 28 MB
Headlamp has a second mode that the desktop comparison hides. The in-cluster deployment runs headlamp-server as a normal pod and serves the identical UI to a browser:
| Image | Container RSS | |
|---|---|---|
| Headlamp in-cluster | 259 MB | 28.7 MB |
Twenty-nine megabytes, measured on the node while the deployment was running. The same project that costs 380 MB of PSS as a desktop app costs 29 MB of cluster memory as a server, and then every person on the team opens it in a tab they already have running.
The trade is authentication. The desktop app reuses the kubeconfig that is already on your laptop. The in-cluster deployment needs a service account token - which means you decide what that account is allowed to touch, and you need a way to reach the service. That is a half hour of RBAC and ingress work you do not owe the desktop app. For a team it is a half hour well spent; for one person on one cluster it is pure overhead.
How to choose
You live in a terminal, or your clusters are behind a bastion. k9s. One static binary, one process, 105 MB, and it works over SSH where no desktop app can follow. It is also the only one here that costs nothing extra when you are already in a shell.
You want a browser UI for a team. Headlamp in the cluster. It is the project the Dashboard handed off to, it is in kubernetes-sigs, and at 29 MB per cluster the resource argument is over before it starts. Budget the RBAC work.
You want the Lens workflow and you are done paying for it. FreeLens. MIT, no account, no activation, releases shipping steadily - 2.0.0 landed two days before we wrote this. It is the heaviest thing in the table, but it is heavy the way Lens was heavy, and that is what people are coming for.
You are already a Lens customer with SSO and team features. Stay. Nothing here replaces the paid feature set; the free tiers replace the free tier.
You were about to deploy kubernetes-dashboard. Don't. Not because it stopped working - because it is an unmaintained web UI holding a service account in your cluster, and that is a very specific kind of debt.
What we did not measure
Honest limits on the table above:
- No startup timings. Our test cluster flapped between Ready and NotReady during the session, which makes every time-to-first-render number meaningless. We dropped them rather than publish numbers we could not reproduce.
- No long-run memory growth. These are footprints at launch, not after eight hours with twenty tabs of logs open. The desktop apps will grow; how much is a different article.
- Linux only. macOS and Windows builds of the same versions are packaged differently and will not match these numbers.
- We did not test Lens Desktop itself. It requires an account to activate, and we were not going to create one to produce a memory figure. Its row above is its licensing, taken from its own pricing page.
One disclosure, since this site belongs to a product in the same space: we build ROZOOM, a desktop Kubernetes IDE. It is not in the comparison table because the honest measurement we tried did not render in our headless test rig, and a number we cannot stand behind is worse than no number at all. If you want to look at it, it is at rozoom.app - and the table above is the one we would hand a colleague regardless.
FAQ
Is kubernetes-dashboard dead?
The repository is archived and read-only since 21 January 2026, and the maintainers cite a lack of active maintainers and contributors. Release 7.14.0 still installs and runs. It will not get security fixes, which is the part that matters for something holding cluster credentials.
What replaced the Kubernetes Dashboard?
Headlamp, by the Dashboard's own README. It lives in kubernetes-sigs under SIG UI and joined the CNCF in 2023 at Sandbox level. It runs both as a desktop app and in-cluster behind a browser.
Is Lens still free?
There is still a free Personal tier, described as being for students, hobbyists and engineers at small organizations, with a footnote excluding organizations above $10 million in annual revenue or funding beyond a 30-day evaluation. Paid plans start at $25 per seat per month on annual billing. Lens Desktop activates against a Lens ID account.
What is FreeLens?
A free, MIT-licensed desktop Kubernetes UI, built by a community project on the OpenLens codebase - the open-source core Lens was built on. No account, no activation. Version 2.0.0 was released on 28 October 2026.
Which Kubernetes GUI uses the least memory?
Of the three we measured, k9s at 105 MB - and it is a terminal UI, not a GUI. Among the graphical options, Headlamp deployed in-cluster is the lightest by an order of magnitude: 29 MB on the node, with the UI rendered by a browser you already have open.
Can I just use kubectl?
Yes, and for anything scripted you should. The UIs earn their keep for the other job: scanning thirty namespaces for the one pod that is unhappy, following logs across restarts, and giving people who do not live in a terminal a way to look without a cheat sheet.
What's next
If you are picking a UI, you are probably also picking what it connects to. The companion pieces: the VPS comparison for the box underneath, and Docker in production for the layer below that.
Originally published at news.rozoom.app.
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