An honest comparison
Rubick vs Headlamp.
Headlamp is what you deploy for a team. Rubick is what you run on your own machine when you want the unvarnished version of what the cluster is doing.
Pick Headlamp if
- ·You want one URL the whole team opens, deployed in-cluster with RBAC deciding who sees what.
- ·You want to extend the UI with your own plugins and branding.
- ·You want a Kubernetes sub-project with SIG UI governance behind it.
Pick Rubick if
- ·You do not want to deploy or operate anything to look at your cluster.
- ·You want status that disagrees with .status.phase when the container is crashlooping.
- ·You want the traffic chain, interception warnings and integrations read out of the box, no plugins to write.
| Rubick | Headlamp | |
|---|---|---|
| License | GPL-3.0-or-later | Apache-2.0 |
| Price | free | free |
| Account | none | none; your cluster auth |
| Runs as | desktop app on your machine | web UI in-cluster, or a desktop app |
| Governance | one project, GPLv3 | Kubernetes SIG UI sub-project |
| Extensibility | integrations built in, folder + line to add one | plugin SDK, write your own |
| Team sharing | not yet; today it is a local client | yes, that is the point |
Headlamp solves team access; Rubick does not, for now. Opening it from a browser is on the wishlist, not in the app, and a wishlist is not a feature. If you need a shared URL today, that is Headlamp and this page will not talk you out of it.
Last verified August 2026. Facts age; when in doubt, trust their site over this table.