# kubernetes-sigs/karpenter

Karpenter is a Kubernetes Node Autoscaler built for flexibility, performance, and simplicity.

Repository: https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/karpenter
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/karpenter
Language: Go
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2026-08-26T01:11:38+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 95/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:39:23.370411+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 86, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 1422, "days_push": 8, "days_rel": 12, "gap_med": 0.0, "n_releases_24m": 85}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2126, forks 556 (observed 2026-08-28T04:06:16.886841+00:00)

## What it is
Karpenter is a Kubernetes node autoscaler that watches for unschedulable pods, provisions right-sized nodes to meet their scheduling constraints, and removes nodes when no longer needed. It is a cloud-agnostic core with provider implementations for AWS, Azure, GCP, and many other platforms.

## Use cases
- automatically scale kubernetes nodes based on pending pods
- reduce kubernetes cluster compute costs by bin-packing workloads
- provision nodes that match pod resource requests and affinities
- replace cluster autoscaler with faster node provisioning
- automatically remove underutilized kubernetes nodes
- run autoscaling across aws azure gcp kubernetes clusters

## When to avoid
- you run kubernetes on-premises without a supported provider implementation
- you only need horizontal pod autoscaling rather than node autoscaling
- you want a fully managed autoscaler without operating a controller in your cluster

## Facets
- artifact type: service
- maturity: active
- function: container-orchestration, deployment, cloud, scheduling, infrastructure-as-code
- domain: cloud-computing, infrastructure-as-code, microservices
- platform: go, cloud, self-hosted
- tags: autoscaler, node-provisioning, kubernetes-node-autoscaler, cluster-autoscaling, cost-optimization, multi-cloud, devops, containers, kubernetes

## Member repositories
- kubernetes-sigs/karpenter (main) score 95

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:16.886841+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T02:52:31.613217+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/karpenter (fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:16.886841+00:00, sha 917eb2157733)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.