# FairwindsOps/polaris

Validation of best practices in your Kubernetes clusters

Repository: https://github.com/FairwindsOps/polaris
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/polaris
Homepage: https://www.fairwinds.com/polaris
Language: Go
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: kubernetes, audit, best-practices, cluster, dashboard, fairwinds-official
Last push: 2026-08-26T18:12:19+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 98/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 97, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2848, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 23, "gap_med": 24, "n_releases_24m": 22}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 3384, forks 231 (observed 2026-08-28T04:07:58.702527+00:00)

## What it is
Polaris is an open source policy engine for Kubernetes that validates and remediates resource configuration against 30+ built-in best-practice policies, with support for custom policies written in JSON Schema. It runs as a dashboard, an admission controller (mutating/validating webhook), or a CLI for testing YAML in CI/CD pipelines.

## Use cases
- audit kubernetes cluster for configuration best practices
- enforce security policies on kubernetes workloads before deployment
- validate kubernetes yaml files in ci pipeline
- check that pods have resource requests and limits set
- detect containers running as root or with privileged access
- automatically fix kubernetes misconfigurations with a mutating webhook
- visualize kubernetes configuration issues in a dashboard
- write custom kubernetes policies as code

## When to choose
- you want policy-as-code validation of kubernetes manifests in CI/CD
- you need an admission controller to reject or auto-remediate non-compliant workloads
- you want a visual dashboard of cluster configuration health
- you need built-in security, efficiency, and reliability checks without writing Rego

## When to avoid
- you need general-purpose policy enforcement beyond configuration checks (consider OPA/Gatekeeper or Kyverno)
- you need vulnerability scanning or image scanning (Polaris checks configuration, not CVEs)
- you need cost allocation and multi-cluster aggregation (that is Fairwinds Insights, the commercial product)

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: active
- function: security, monitoring, infrastructure-as-code, ci-cd, configuration-management, cli
- domain: security, cloud-computing, infrastructure-as-code
- platform: cli, go, self-hosted, cloud
- tags: policy-engine, kubernetes-audit, admission-controller, policy-as-code, dashboard, best-practices, mutating-webhook, fairwinds, kubernetes, devops, containers, docker

## Member repositories
- FairwindsOps/polaris (main) score 98

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:58.702527+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 2026-08-29T18:39:28.873619+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/FairwindsOps/polaris (fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:58.702527+00:00, sha 7fa53b31109d)
  - homepage: https://www.fairwinds.com/polaris (fetched 2026-08-29T09:33:24.128663+00:00, sha ef414f67443d)
  - site_page: https://www.fairwinds.com/insights-features (fetched 2026-08-29T09:33:24.137672+00:00, sha b96d47f953f8)
  - site_page: https://insights.docs.fairwinds.com/ (fetched 2026-08-29T09:33:24.139731+00:00, sha 0563b916b4ac)
  - site_page: https://www.fairwinds.com/gke-quickstart (fetched 2026-08-29T09:33:24.141525+00:00, sha 01174bc9b9d6)
  - site_page: https://www.fairwinds.com/aks-quickstart (fetched 2026-08-29T09:33:24.143167+00:00, sha 3929a4106941)
  - site_page: https://polaris.docs.fairwinds.com/checks/security (fetched 2026-08-29T09:33:24.145108+00:00, sha b8129f48f89a)
  - site_page: https://polaris.docs.fairwinds.com/checks/reliability (fetched 2026-08-29T09:33:24.146804+00:00, sha 496149a3aebc)
  - site_page: https://polaris.docs.fairwinds.com/checks/efficiency (fetched 2026-08-29T09:33:24.148444+00:00, sha 0236b38f7ef8)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.