Self-Hosted Installation

K8Cost can run entirely in your own Kubernetes cluster using our Helm chart.

Prerequisites

• Kubernetes 1.24+
• Helm 3.10+
• PostgreSQL 14+ (built-in or external)
• A K8Cost license key (get one here)

Quick Install

# Add the K8Cost Helm repository
helm repo add k8cost https://charts.k8cost.com
helm repo update

# Install with built-in PostgreSQL
helm install k8cost k8cost/k8cost \
  --namespace k8cost \
  --create-namespace \
  --set config.licenseKey=YOUR_LICENSE_KEY

Verify Installation

# Check pods are running
kubectl get pods -n k8cost
# Expected:
# k8cost-0              1/1   Running
# k8cost-postgresql-0   1/1   Running

# Get the auto-generated admin password
kubectl get secret k8cost-secret -n k8cost \
  -o jsonpath='{.data.admin-password}' | base64 -d

# Port-forward to access the dashboard
kubectl port-forward svc/k8cost 8080:80 -n k8cost
# Open http://localhost:8080

External PostgreSQL

helm install k8cost k8cost/k8cost \
  --namespace k8cost \
  --create-namespace \
  --set postgresql.enabled=false \
  --set config.database.url="postgres://k8cost:pass@your-db:5432/k8cost"

Ingress

# values-production.yaml
ingress:
  enabled: true
  className: nginx
  hosts:
    - host: k8cost.internal.company.com
      paths:
        - path: /
          pathType: Prefix
  tls:
    - secretName: k8cost-tls
      hosts:
        - k8cost.internal.company.com

helm install k8cost k8cost/k8cost -f values-production.yaml

Adding Remote Clusters

The self-hosted instance monitors its own cluster by default. To add remote clusters:

1. Log into the K8Cost dashboard
2. Go to Clusters → Add Cluster
3. Copy the agent manifest
4. Apply in the remote cluster: kubectl apply -f k8cost-agent.yaml

Resource Requirements

Component	CPU Request	Memory Request	Storage
K8Cost API	100m	256Mi	—
PostgreSQL	250m	512Mi	10Gi
Agent CronJob	50m	128Mi	—

For clusters with 500+ pods, increase API resources to 500m CPU / 1Gi memory.

Upgrading

helm repo update
helm upgrade k8cost k8cost/k8cost --namespace k8cost

Database migrations run automatically on startup.