kubectl-top-pod(1)

kubectl-top-pod1

Display resource (cpu/memory) usage of pods

Usage

kubectl top pod [OPTIONS]

Eric Paris Jan 2015

Overview

Display resource (CPU/memory) usage of pods.

The 'top pod' command allows you to see the resource consumption of pods.

Due to the metrics pipeline delay, they may be unavailable for a few minutes since pod creation.

Options

-A, --all-namespaces=false
If present, list the requested object(s) across all namespaces. Namespace in current context is ignored even if specified with --namespace.

--containers=false
If present, print usage of containers within a pod.

--field-selector=""
Selector (field query) to filter on, supports '=', '==', and '!='.(e.g. --field-selector key1=value1,key2=value2). The server only supports a limited number of field queries per type.

--no-headers=false
If present, print output without headers.

-l, --selector=""
Selector (label query) to filter on, supports '=', '==', '!=', 'in', 'notin'.(e.g. -l key1=value1,key2=value2,key3 in (value3)). Matching objects must satisfy all of the specified label constraints.

--show-swap=false
Print pod resources related to swap memory.

--sort-by=""
If non-empty, sort pods list using specified field. The field can be either 'cpu' or 'memory'.

--sum=false
Print the sum of the resource usage

--use-protocol-buffers=true
Enables using protocol-buffers to access Metrics API.

Options inherited from parent commands

--as=""
Username to impersonate for the operation. User could be a regular user or a service account in a namespace.

--as-group=[]
Group to impersonate for the operation, this flag can be repeated to specify multiple groups.

--as-uid=""
UID to impersonate for the operation.

--as-user-extra=[]
User extras to impersonate for the operation, this flag can be repeated to specify multiple values for the same key.

--cache-dir="/home/username/.kube/cache"
Default cache directory

--certificate-authority=""
Path to a cert file for the certificate authority

--client-certificate=""
Path to a client certificate file for TLS

--client-key=""
Path to a client key file for TLS

--cluster=""
The name of the kubeconfig cluster to use

--context=""
The name of the kubeconfig context to use

--disable-compression=false
If true, opt-out of response compression for all requests to the server

--insecure-skip-tls-verify=false
If true, the server's certificate will not be checked for validity. This will make your HTTPS connections insecure

--kubeconfig=""
Path to the kubeconfig file to use for CLI requests.

--kuberc=""
Path to the kuberc file to use for preferences. This can be disabled by exporting KUBECTL_KUBERC=false feature gate or turning off the feature KUBERC=off.

--match-server-version=false
Require server version to match client version

-n, --namespace=""
If present, the namespace scope for this CLI request

--password=""
Password for basic authentication to the API server

--profile="none"
Name of profile to capture. One of (none|cpu|heap|goroutine|threadcreate|block|mutex|trace)

--profile-output="profile.pprof"
Name of the file to write the profile to

--proxy-url=""
Proxy URL to use for requests to the API server

--request-timeout="0"
The length of time to wait before giving up on a single server request. Non-zero values should contain a corresponding time unit (e.g. 1s, 2m, 3h). A value of zero means don't timeout requests.

-s, --server=""
The address and port of the Kubernetes API server

--tls-server-name=""
Server name to use for server certificate validation. If it is not provided, the hostname used to contact the server is used

--token=""
Bearer token for authentication to the API server

--user=""
The name of the kubeconfig user to use

--username=""
Username for basic authentication to the API server

--version=false
--version, --version=raw prints version information and quits; --version=vX.Y.Z... sets the reported version

--warnings-as-errors=false
Treat warnings received from the server as errors and exit with a non-zero exit code

Examples

  # Show metrics for all pods in the default namespace
  kubectl top pod
  # Show metrics for all pods in the given namespace
  kubectl top pod --namespace=NAMESPACE
  # Show metrics for a given pod and its containers
  kubectl top pod POD_NAME --containers
  # Show metrics for the pods defined by label name=myLabel
  kubectl top pod -l name=myLabel

Releases

3 releases since Debian 11 (Bullseye); the text changed 1 time.

  1. 11–12
  2. Arch

History

January 2015, Originally compiled by Eric Paris (eparis at redhat dot com) based on the kubernetes source material, but hopefully they have been automatically generated since!

From kubectl 1.37.2-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.