kube-state-metrics VS metrics-server

Compare kube-state-metrics vs metrics-server and see what are their differences.

metrics-server

Scalable and efficient source of container resource metrics for Kubernetes built-in autoscaling pipelines. (by kubernetes-sigs)
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kube-state-metrics metrics-server
33 39
5,026 5,360
1.8% 2.5%
8.9 8.6
7 days ago 4 days ago
Go Go
Apache License 2.0 Apache License 2.0
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

kube-state-metrics

Posts with mentions or reviews of kube-state-metrics. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-07-11.

metrics-server

Posts with mentions or reviews of metrics-server. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-11-23.
  • Deploy Secure Spring Boot Microservices on Amazon EKS Using Terraform and Kubernetes
    13 projects | dev.to | 23 Nov 2023
    and the Metrics Server.
  • ☸️ Managed Kubernetes : Our dev is on AWS, our prod is on OVH
    6 projects | dev.to | 1 Jul 2023
    Metrics-server is installed by default on OVH, and has to be installed manually on AWS/EKS cluster.
  • Autoscaling Ingress controllers in Kubernetes
    4 projects | dev.to | 17 Apr 2023
    It's an autoscaler with a metrics server (so I don't need to install 2 different tools).
  • Autoscaling Nodes in Kubernetes
    3 projects | dev.to | 31 Dec 2022
    # Create EKS Cluster with version 1.23 eksctl create cluster -f eks-cluster.yaml # Output like below shows cluster has been successfully created 2022-12-30 16:26:46 [ℹ] kubectl command should work with "/home/ec2-user/.kube/config", try 'kubectl get nodes' 2022-12-30 16:26:46 [✔] EKS cluster "ca-demo" in "us-west-2" region is ready # Deploy the Metric server kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/metrics-server/releases/latest/download/components.yaml # Output of the above command looks something like below - serviceaccount/metrics-server created clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/system:aggregated-metrics-reader created clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/system:metrics-server created rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/metrics-server-auth-reader created clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/metrics-server:system:auth-delegator created clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/system:metrics-server created service/metrics-server created deployment.apps/metrics-server created apiservice.apiregistration.k8s.io/v1beta1.metrics.k8s.io created
  • Korifi : API Cloud Foundry V3 expérimentale dans Kubernetes …
    7 projects | dev.to | 25 Dec 2022
    ubuntu@korifi:~$ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/metrics-server/releases/download/v0.6.2/components.yaml serviceaccount/metrics-server created clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/system:aggregated-metrics-reader created clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/system:metrics-server created rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/metrics-server-auth-reader created clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/metrics-server:system:auth-delegator created clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/system:metrics-server created service/metrics-server created deployment.apps/metrics-server created apiservice.apiregistration.k8s.io/v1beta1.metrics.k8s.io created ubuntu@korifi:~$ kubectl get po,svc -A NAMESPACE NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE cert-manager pod/cert-manager-74d949c895-w6gzm 1/1 Running 0 13m cert-manager pod/cert-manager-cainjector-d9bc5979d-jhr9m 1/1 Running 0 13m cert-manager pod/cert-manager-webhook-84b7ddd796-xw878 1/1 Running 0 13m kpack pod/kpack-controller-84cbbcdff6-nnhdn 1/1 Running 0 9m40s kpack pod/kpack-webhook-56c6b59c4-9zvlb 1/1 Running 0 9m40s kube-system pod/coredns-565d847f94-kst2l 1/1 Running 0 31m kube-system pod/coredns-565d847f94-rv8pn 1/1 Running 0 31m kube-system pod/etcd-kind-control-plane 1/1 Running 0 32m kube-system pod/kindnet-275pd 1/1 Running 0 31m kube-system pod/kube-apiserver-kind-control-plane 1/1 Running 0 32m kube-system pod/kube-controller-manager-kind-control-plane 1/1 Running 0 32m kube-system pod/kube-proxy-qw9fj 1/1 Running 0 31m kube-system pod/kube-scheduler-kind-control-plane 1/1 Running 0 32m kube-system pod/metrics-server-8ff8f88c6-69t9z 0/1 Running 0 4m21s local-path-storage pod/local-path-provisioner-684f458cdd-f6zqf 1/1 Running 0 31m metallb-system pod/controller-84d6d4db45-bph5x 1/1 Running 0 29m metallb-system pod/speaker-pcl4p 1/1 Running 0 29m projectcontour pod/contour-7b9b9cdfd6-h5jzg 1/1 Running 0 6m43s projectcontour pod/contour-7b9b9cdfd6-nhbq2 1/1 Running 0 6m43s projectcontour pod/contour-certgen-v1.23.2-hxh7k 0/1 Completed 0 6m43s projectcontour pod/envoy-v4xk9 2/2 Running 0 6m43s servicebinding-system pod/servicebinding-controller-manager-85f7498cf-xd7jc 2/2 Running 0 115s NAMESPACE NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE cert-manager service/cert-manager ClusterIP 10.96.153.49 9402/TCP 13m cert-manager service/cert-manager-webhook ClusterIP 10.96.102.82 443/TCP 13m default service/kubernetes ClusterIP 10.96.0.1 443/TCP 32m kpack service/kpack-webhook ClusterIP 10.96.227.201 443/TCP 9m40s kube-system service/kube-dns ClusterIP 10.96.0.10 53/UDP,53/TCP,9153/TCP 32m kube-system service/metrics-server ClusterIP 10.96.204.62 443/TCP 4m21s metallb-system service/webhook-service ClusterIP 10.96.186.139 443/TCP 29m projectcontour service/contour ClusterIP 10.96.138.58 8001/TCP 6m43s projectcontour service/envoy LoadBalancer 10.96.126.44 172.18.255.200 80:30632/TCP,443:30730/TCP 6m43s servicebinding-system service/servicebinding-controller-manager-metrics-service ClusterIP 10.96.147.189 8443/TCP 115s servicebinding-system service/servicebinding-webhook-service ClusterIP 10.96.14.224 443/TCP 115s
  • Performance testing an application running on kubernetes
    2 projects | /r/kubernetes | 25 Oct 2022
    If you have the the metrics-server installed, you can pull all of the resource information yourself and manipulate it in a way that's useful for you. Link.
  • Murre - the lightweight K8s metrics monitoring tool
    3 projects | /r/kubernetes | 20 Oct 2022
    I wonder who will raise the glove and take that approach to use to post Metrics API resources instead of metrics-server.
  • HorizontalPodAutoscaler does not return TARGETS metrics and returns '<unknown>' on kubectl.
    2 projects | dev.to | 1 Oct 2022
  • Request-based autoscaling in Kubernetes: scaling to zero
    4 projects | dev.to | 12 Sep 2022
    A metrics server to store and aggregate metrics (Kubernetes doesn't come with one by default).
  • How to Deploy JHipster Microservices on Amazon EKS Using Terraform and Kubernetes
    10 projects | dev.to | 5 Jul 2022
    and Metrics Server, and Cluster Autoscaler for scaling your workloads.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing kube-state-metrics and metrics-server you can also consider the following projects:

prometheus - The Prometheus monitoring system and time series database.

cadvisor - Analyzes resource usage and performance characteristics of running containers.

k8s-prometheus-adapter - An implementation of the custom.metrics.k8s.io API using Prometheus

kube-prometheus - Use Prometheus to monitor Kubernetes and applications running on Kubernetes

php-fpm_exporter - A prometheus exporter for PHP-FPM.

k3s - Lightweight Kubernetes

kubespray - Deploy a Production Ready Kubernetes Cluster

istio - Connect, secure, control, and observe services.

k9s - 🐶 Kubernetes CLI To Manage Your Clusters In Style!

kube-metrics-adapter - General purpose metrics adapter for Kubernetes HPA metrics

minikube - Run Kubernetes locally

rancher - Complete container management platform