kubernetes/kube-state-metrics
Generating and Exposing Cluster Metrics

Generate metrics about the state of Kubernetes objects with precision. Real-time observability for your entire cluster infrastructure.

Kube State Metrics Analyzer

Paste kube-state-metrics output below. Fully client-side, read-only & zero side effects.

10M+

Downloads/Month

500+

Contributors

99.9%

Uptime SLA

50+

Metrics Types

Features

Everything You Need
for Kubernetes Observability

Powerful metrics generation that gives you
complete visibility into your cluster state

Real-Time Metrics

Get instant visibility into pod states, deployments, nodes, and more with sub-second metric generation.

Production Ready

Battle-tested in production by thousands of organizations. Reliable, stable, and secure by design.

Lightning Fast

Optimized for performance with minimal resource footprint. Scales effortlessly with your cluster.

Complete Coverage

50+ metric types covering pods, services, deployments, nodes, jobs, and all Kubernetes objects.

Auto Discovery

Automatically discovers and monitors new resources as your infrastructure grows and changes.

Easy Integration

Seamlessly integrates with Prometheus, Grafana, and all major monitoring platforms.

Quick Start

Deploy in
Minutes, Not Hours

Get started with a simple Helm installation. No complex configuration required—just deploy and start collecting metrics immediately.

				
					# Install kube-state-metrics
helm repo add prometheus-community \
  https://prometheus-community.github.io/helm-charts
 
helm install kube-state-metrics \
  prometheus-community/kube-state-metrics \
  --namespace monitoring
 
# Verify installation
kubectl get pods -n monitoring
 
# Access metrics endpoint
curl http://kube-state-metrics:8080/metrics

Integrations

Works With Your
Existing Stack

Seamlessly integrates with all major monitoring and observability platforms.

Prometheus

Grafana

Datadog

New Relic

Elastic

Splunk

Ready to Get Ready to Get?

Join thousands of organizations using kube-state-metrics for production-grade Kubernetes monitoring. Open source and free forever.

FAQs

What are Kube State Metrics used for?

Kube State Metrics is an add-on agent for Kubernetes that exposes cluster-level metrics about the state of your resources like deployments, pods, services, and nodes. It helps DevOps teams monitor Kubernetes objects, track health, and integrate with Prometheus for alerting and visualization.

How do I check Kube State Metrics?

To check Kube State Metrics, you need to:

Deploy the kube-state-metrics service in your cluster.
Expose it via a Service or port-forward.
Access metrics through a Prometheus server or directly via curl on the metrics endpoint (/metrics). This gives you a real-time snapshot of cluster state for monitoring and alerting.

What is the difference between Kube State Metrics and Metrics Server?

Kube State Metrics: Exposes metrics about Kubernetes object states (e.g., number of desired vs. available pods).
Metrics Server: Provides resource usage metrics like CPU and memory for pods and nodes. Think of Metrics Server as real-time performance data, and Kube State Metrics as state and configuration metrics.

What is the difference between Node Exporter and Kube State Metrics?

Node Exporter: Focuses on node-level metrics like CPU, memory, disk, and network usage.
Kube State Metrics: Focuses on Kubernetes object state (pods, deployments, replicasets, etc.). Together, they give a complete view of cluster health and performance.

What are the limits of Kube State Metrics?

Kube State Metrics:

Only exposes read-only metrics; it does not affect cluster state.
Can become resource-intensive in very large clusters with thousands of objects.
Depends on Prometheus or other monitoring systems for storing and alerting on metrics.

What are the 4 types of metrics in Prometheus?

Prometheus metrics come in four main types:

Counter – Monotonically increasing values (e.g., request count).
Gauge – Values that can go up or down (e.g., current memory usage).
Histogram – Observations grouped into buckets (e.g., request duration).
Summary – Similar to histogram but with quantiles for latency.

What are the three types of metrics?

Metrics are generally categorized as:

Counter metrics – Cumulative counts.
Gauge metrics – Point-in-time values.
Histogram/Summary metrics – Distribution and latency metrics.

Is Nginx stateful or stateless?

Nginx is typically stateless, meaning it does not store session data internally. It can serve multiple requests independently, but stateful behavior can be added with external storage or session management if needed.

kubernetes/kube-state-metrics Generating and Exposing Cluster Metrics