The honest comparison: local, self-hosted, or Cloud.
Three ways to run Radar. No marketing gymnastics - here's exactly what you get with each path so you can make the right call for your team.
Single binary. Your laptop. Done.
kubectl radar opens your browser in 30 seconds. No cluster install, no in-cluster footprint, no outbound calls. Best for individual engineers and on-call work.
$brew install skyhook-io/tap/radarRun Radar in your cluster. Your team logs in.
Deploy Radar to your cluster with Helm. OIDC or proxy auth lets your whole team in. Per-user K8s RBAC via impersonation. Same engine, no Cloud account. Best for one-cluster teams.
$helm repo add skyhook https://skyhook-io.github.io/helm-charts helm install radar skyhook/radar -n radar --create-namespaceMulti-cluster fleet. We host it.
Radar Cloud is the hosted control plane on top of the same engine. It adds the things only useful at fleet scale: cross-cluster views, long-term retention, SSO, and routed alerts.
$helm repo add skyhook https://skyhook-io.github.io/helm-charts helm install radar skyhook/radar -n radar --create-namespace \\ --set cloud.token=$TOKENThe full comparison matrix.
Three deployments, same engine. Where OSS is enough, it says so. Where Cloud adds value, we explain why.
| Feature | Local binary | Self-hosted (Helm) | Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core engine | |||
Topology graph Live service + workload topology with real-time connections | Enhanced (multi-cluster) | ||
Resource explorer | |||
Helm release manager | |||
Image filesystem viewer | |||
TLS certificate tracker | |||
Traffic visualization Auto-detects Hubble, Caretta, or Istio | |||
Cluster audit (31 checks) | |||
Cost insights (OpenCost) | |||
MCP / AI integration Built-in MCP server, enabled by default | |||
GitOps (FluxCD + ArgoCD) Sync state, app-of-apps, reconciliation triggers | |||
| Scope | |||
Clusters Local binary connects via your kubeconfig, one active context at a time. Self-hosted Helm sees the cluster it runs in. Cloud connects multiple clusters via in-cluster Radar instances and shows them all in one fleet view. | Any cluster via kubeconfig | Cluster where deployed | Unlimited, all in one fleet view |
Users Local binary is single-user (your laptop). Self-hosted Helm authenticates via OIDC or proxy and impersonates each user against the K8s API. Cloud users sign in to your workspace. | 1 (local) | Unlimited (OIDC + RBAC) | Unlimited |
Multi-cluster dashboards | |||
Cross-cluster search | |||
| Data retention | |||
Event timeline Both OSS deployments persist events locally per cluster (memory or SQLite, configurable). Cloud persists cross-cluster with longer retention. | In-memory or local SQLite | Local SQLite, configurable | Persistent, cross-cluster |
Audit log of UI actions | 7 days to unlimited | ||
Post-mortem replay | |||
| Authentication & access | |||
Auth modes Local binary uses your kubeconfig directly. Self-hosted Helm supports proxy auth (oauth2-proxy, Pomerium, Cloudflare Access) and OIDC (Google, Okta, Dex, Keycloak). Cloud adds SAML SSO on every plan and SCIM on Enterprise. | kubeconfig | Proxy, OIDC | Google, GitHub, SAML, OIDC (+ SCIM on Enterprise) |
Team workspaces | |||
Role-based access control Self-hosted uses K8s RBAC via impersonation. Cloud adds workspace-level scoped roles. | K8s native | K8s native (impersonation) | K8s native + scoped roles |
| Collaboration | |||
Shareable deep-links | Within your network | ||
Annotations on resources | |||
Slack / PagerDuty / MS Teams alerts | |||
Webhook integrations | |||
| Operations | |||
Hosting | Your laptop | Your cluster | Fully managed SaaS |
Updates | Manual binary upgrade | Manual `helm upgrade` | Automatic, zero-downtime |
Uptime SLA | 99.9% (Enterprise) | ||
Professional support | GitHub Discussions | GitHub Discussions | Email / priority / CSM |
Outbound network calls Both OSS deployments are airgapped-ready. Cloud-connected Radar instances open an outbound tunnel to the Radar control plane. | None | None | In-cluster → control plane |
Data residency | Your laptop | Your cluster | US hosted; EU region or BYOC on Enterprise |
| Compliance | |||
SOC 2 Type 2 | N/A (you host) | N/A (you host) | |
BYOC / on-prem deployment | Enterprise plan | ||
Source code visibility | Full (Apache 2.0) | Full (Apache 2.0) | In-cluster Radar only (Apache 2.0) |
Four promises we make to the OSS community.
You're going to invest time learning Radar. Here's what we commit to in return.
The OSS stays OSS.
Radar is Apache 2.0. It will remain Apache 2.0. We will not relicense to BUSL, SSPL, Elastic License, or any other 'open-ish' license that reserves commercial rights for us.
No artificial crippling.
We won't remove features from the OSS to push you toward Radar. If a feature ships in OSS, it stays in OSS. Radar features exist because they can't work in a local binary - not because we gated them.
Community contributions welcome.
We review PRs from the community the same way we review internal PRs. Maintainers at Skyhook are paid to make the OSS better, not to keep it behind Radar.
What runs in your cluster is open-source too.
The in-cluster Radar install that connects to Radar Cloud is Apache 2.0 and auditable. You can read every line of code that runs in your cluster.
Loved by Kubernetes operators.
Unfiltered signal from teams running Radar in their clusters. Click any card to see the original.
I got kicked out of Lens free dashboard and now I need to subscribe, after using it since like 2020. Saw this post, made the switch and holy I am in love … Lens should be free and this dashboard should be paid 😂
Just opened it in under 15 seconds, the topology view is awesome.
Damn, this is pretty impressive. It's already on my homelab.
Was already solid, but the updates you push every week? They are amazing. Love the new Audit Page. Love the keyboard shortcuts, so intuitive!
I like what I see so far! The timeline feature is a very nice touch.
I tried `radar` for the first time (great work, btw!).
I really like what the Skyhook OSS team has done with Radar, I am definitely a fan. It has a much cleaner, modern look and feel … will be using it as my go-to k8s visualization.
Nice one! In-cluster deployment works like a charm, and may replace my current dashboard I am using.
Works way, way better! For the 322-node cluster the startup time was ~65 sec. Impressive!
Looks quite interesting and unique for visualization & monitoring.
A fresh, lightweight take on how we interact with our clusters.
It's working like a charm, thank you very much!
Looks very promising at first sight, especially the visualizations for topology, timeline and traffic.
loudly said oo0o0oo when I got it running.
I am really liking Radar so far and I am finding it much more useful and streamlined than using Lens IDE.
Love it. A fantastic bit of work here. Well done!
The topology feature is great.
It looks gorgeous.
More feedback every week on GitHub, Reddit, and the Kubernetes Slack.
You probably want Radar Cloud when...
Try it. Both of them.
Install OSS Radar in 30 seconds. Connect it to Radar Cloud in 30 more. See the difference.
Apache 2.0 OSS · Unlimited clusters self-hosted · Hosted free tier for up to 3 clusters