What is kOps used for?

kOps automates the provisioning, upgrading, and management of Kubernetes clusters in production environments. It is a good fit for production Kubernetes cluster provisioning and lifecycle management, and multi-cloud Kubernetes deployment and operations.

Yes. kOps is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at kubernetes/kops and is written mainly in Go.

Yes. kOps is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host kOps?

Yes. kOps can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is kOps an alternative to?

kOps is an open-source alternative to Rafay, IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, Oracle Kubernetes Engine and Amazon ECS. Other open-source alternatives to Rafay include Kubernetes, Rancher and Gardener.

Is kOps actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to kOps was on 13 October 2026, and the latest release is v1.36.2, published on 8 August 2026. The project has 17k stars on GitHub.

kOps: open-source alternative to Rafay

About kOps

kOps (Kubernetes Operations) is a tool for creating, upgrading, and managing production-grade Kubernetes clusters. It supports multiple cloud providers including AWS, GCE, Digital Ocean, Hetzner, OpenStack, Azure, and Spot Ocean. The tool handles cluster lifecycle tasks such as rolling updates, high availability setup, and etcd administration.

Key features

Automated Kubernetes cluster creation and management
Supports multiple cloud providers (AWS, GCE, Digital Ocean, Hetzner, OpenStack, Azure, Spot Ocean)
Rolling updates and upgrades for clusters
High availability configuration
etcd backup, restore, and encryption
Networking support including CNI plugins like Calico, Cilium, Flannel, and Kube-Router

Good fit for

Production Kubernetes cluster provisioning and lifecycle management
Multi-cloud Kubernetes deployment and operations

Built with: Go tools; Kubernetes tools
Tags: kubernetes; cluster management; devops; infrastructure; cloud

kOps: questions and answers

What is kOps used for?: kOps automates the provisioning, upgrading, and management of Kubernetes clusters in production environments. It is a good fit for production Kubernetes cluster provisioning and lifecycle management, and multi-cloud Kubernetes deployment and operations.
Is kOps open source?: Yes. kOps is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at kubernetes/kops and is written mainly in Go.
Is kOps free?: Yes. kOps is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host kOps?: Yes. kOps can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is kOps an alternative to?: kOps is an open-source alternative to Rafay, IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, Oracle Kubernetes Engine and Amazon ECS. Other open-source alternatives to Rafay include Kubernetes, Rancher and Gardener.
Is kOps actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to kOps was on 13 October 2026, and the latest release is v1.36.2, published on 8 August 2026. The project has 17k stars on GitHub.