Freelens vs Lens 2025: Which Free Kubernetes IDE Reigns Supreme?

Freelens is a completely free, open-source Kubernetes IDE that delivers all the power of Lens without nagging for a subscription. In this video, I’ll show you how Freelens brings a slick GUI, built-in kubectl & helm, live metrics, persistent terminals, and a rich plugin ecosystem (FluxCD, Argo, CRD inspectors, and more) to your clusters. If you are managing Kubernetes in Proxmox VMs, EKS, or edge Kubernetes, Freelens makes context-switching, port-forwarding, and multi-cluster workspaces easy to manage.

Check out the full blog post on VirtualizationHowto for all the details and screenshots:
👉 https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/f...

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Introduction to Free Lens - 0:00
Word about the video sponsor NAKIVO - 0:39
Overview of FreeLens and OpenLens deprecation - 1:23
Key features of FreeLens - 2:12
Security of the project updates, etc - 2:35
Showing how to install live metrics with Prometheus - 3:15
Built-in editor, pinning port-forwards - 4:05
Has a plugin architecture - 4:33
FluxCD and ArgoCD and other community addons - 4:50
Installation options across OS's - 5:15
Walkthrough of installation in Windows - 5:50
First run experience and points to note - 7:24
Fuzzy search, right-click to edit, delete, etc - 8:12
Security seems to be a focus of the tool - 9:07
FreeLens 1.3 vs Lens 6x - 9:53
Great for homelabs and other environments - 11:24
Roadmap and community involvement - 12:26
Wrapping up FreeLens - 12:59