skyhook-io/radar

**The missing open-source Kubernetes UI.**
Single binary. No account required. Free forever.
🌐 **radarhq.io** · Docs · Releases
Topology, resources, Helm, GitOps, traffic, audit, upgrade impact, and MCP context for AI agents — from your laptop or in-cluster.
Table of contents
- Why Radar?
- Installation
- Usage
- Views — Topology · Resources · Image Filesystem · Timeline · Helm · Compare · TLS · GitOps · Traffic · Cost · Audit · Upgrade impact · RBAC · MCP · Auth
- Supported Resources
- Keyboard Shortcuts
- Security
- Development · Contributing
**Install and run in 30 seconds:**
More installation options ↓
Why Radar?
- **Zero install on your cluster** — runs on your laptop, talks to the K8s API directly
- **Single binary** — no dependencies, no agents, no CRDs
- **Fast on big clusters** — tested on tens of thousands of pods, with responsive views and live updates under real cluster churn
- **Private by design** — your cluster data stays on your machine. No account, no agents, no cloud sync. Usage reporting is off unless you opt in, and then sends only anonymous usage counts and coarse cluster facts: Kubernetes version, platform, node-count range, known integrations (what Radar sends)
- **Airgapped-friendly** — runs as a single binary against the Kubernetes API and works in locked-down environments with outbound egress blocked
- **Real-time** — watches your cluster via informers, pushes updates to the browser via SSE
- **Works everywhere** — GKE, EKS, AKS, minikube, kind, k3s, or any conformant cluster
- **AI-ready** — built-in MCP server lets AI agents inspect, investigate, and operate your cluster through Radar
- **In-cluster option** — deploy with Helm for shared team access with RBAC-scoped permissions
> "Have Radar deployed at work. As far as Kubernetes dashboards go, this is one of the best." — u/TheRealNetroxen
---
Installation
**Quick Install:**
**Homebrew:**
Also available from our tap: brew install skyhook-io/tap/radar.
Then run: kubectl radar. Quick install, PowerShell, Homebrew, and Scoop also set up the radar shorthand. Krew and direct downloads use kubectl radar unless you add your own radar symlink.
More install options — Desktop App (macOS/Linux/Windows), Krew, Scoop, In-Cluster Helm
CLI
**Krew (kubectl plugin manager):**
**Scoop (Windows):**
**PowerShell (Windows):**
**Custom install location (macOS/Linux):**
Quick install writes to /usr/local/bin unless INSTALL_DIR says otherwise. The directory is created if missing, and needs to be on your PATH for radar and kubectl radar to resolve.
**Direct download** — GitHub Releases for macOS, Linux, or Windows.
Desktop App
Native desktop app — no terminal needed.
**Homebrew (macOS):**
**Debian/Ubuntu** — download the .deb from GitHub Releases, then:
**Fedora/RHEL** — download the .rpm from GitHub Releases, then:
**Scoop (Windows):**
**Windows (direct download)** — GitHub Releases.
In-Cluster Deployment
Deploy to your cluster for shared team access:
See the In-Cluster Deployment Guide for Gateway API and ingress exposure, authentication, and RBAC configuration.
---
Usage
To inspect an in-cluster Radar Cloud installation without changing it:
The command reports installation ownership, chart and image, agent readiness,
and Cloud configuration without printing the connection token. Passing both
--namespace and --release selects an exact installation. Live tunnel status
is reported by Radar Cloud using the token in the referenced Kubernetes Secret.
If the Secret or Hub is unavailable, local installation diagnostics still run.
Interactive terminals use restrained status colors; set NO_COLOR (or pipe the
output) for plain text. URLs, tokens, and suggested commands remain unstyled.
**CLI Flags**
The table below covers common startup flags. See the full CLI reference; radar --help is authoritative for the installed version.
| Flag | Default | Description |
|------|---------|-------------|
| --kubeconfig | ~/.kube/config | Path to primary kubeconfig file |
| --kubeconfig-dir | | Comma-separated directories containing additional kubeconfig files |
| --namespace | (all) | Initial namespace filter (supports multi-select in the UI; also used as RBAC fallback for namespace-scoped users) |
| --namespaces | (all) | Initial namespace filters as a comma-separated list, e.g. --namespaces ns1,ns2,ns3. Use this when your identity can list resources in specific namespaces but cannot list namespaces cluster-wide. |
| --namespace-scope | false | Pin namespaced informer caches to a **single** namespace for large clusters (scoping to multiple namespaces is not supported yet). Requires --namespace, a kubeconfig context namespace, or a saved local single-namespace pick. Local mode can rebuild the cache when switching namespaces; auth/cloud mode locks the shared cache to the startup namespace. |