Ship the upgrade without a war room.
Runtimez (runtimez.io) is a read-only Kubernetes platform that tells you exactly what the next Kubernetes version breaks — which workloads, which owners, and how long until the upgrade is forced on you.
one helm install · get, list, watch only · first score in under an hour
From one helm install to an upgrade plan.
90 seconds · captions on screen, music only
One agent. Seven answers. No new collector.
Everything below runs off the same read-only sweep — correlated per workload, not stitched together by you.
Security ∩ upgrade, joined by workload
The differentiator: findings are not two backlogs. A critical CVE sitting on the same deployment that blocks your 1.31 upgrade surfaces as one item, ranked first, because one change retires both risks.
What the next version breaks
Deprecated and removed APIs, CRD coverage and runtime usage per workload — with the forced-upgrade clock and extended-support exposure on every cluster.
CVEs scanned in place
Ephemeral in-cluster jobs read running images and config where they live. Images and pull secrets never leave. CIS and NSA scorecards per cluster.
Every rollout verified
Healthy, degraded, awaiting verification or rolled back — with a pass rate computed over verified rollouts only, and an alert the moment one degrades.
Spend mapped to owners
Requests sized against real p95 usage per namespace, workload and cluster. Over-provisioned and idle workloads carry a monthly number; unowned spend gets named.
Is the cluster full, or is it my pod?
Free room counted the way the scheduler counts it, every pending pod with the scheduler's own reason and the autoscaler's answer, how many more pods of each workload fit, and days until each node pool is full.
Ask runtimez
Questions answered from your own fleet — inventory, findings, posture — with a confidence score and a deep link into the cluster the answer came from. In Slack or in console.
Own the upgrade
Blockers, owners and order of work before you book the window — plus a countdown on every cluster approaching forced upgrade.
Work the queue
Degraded rollouts first, then blocked gates, then the CVEs riding along with them. Ask runtimez from the channel you are already in.
Report the number
One fleet score with a level, compliance posture per cluster, and cost attributed to teams — reported without a dashboard project.
EKS extended support cost calculator
Enter clusters per EKS version and see what you pay today, what changes when 1.34 leaves standard support on Dec 2, and the next 12 months if nothing is upgraded. $0.10 vs $0.60 per cluster-hour.
Work out your bill →kube-upgrade-check
Point it at a cluster and it lists what the next Kubernetes version breaks: removed APIs with the writer named, rejected kubelet and control-plane settings, add-on compatibility — and what it could not check.
Install the CLI →Upgrade Readiness Report
The report for our own EKS cluster, 1.34 → 1.35: verdict, deadlines and cost of waiting, every finding with the vendor's own words and a command to verify it, and what the scan could not check.
Read the report →EKS 1.31 → 1.34 upgrade guide
What breaks at each step from 1.31 to 1.34: the vendor's own words, a command to check your cluster, and the fix. Before the Nov 26 forced upgrade and the Dec 2 price change.
Read the guide →Questions people ask before they connect a cluster.
What is Runtimez?
Runtimez (runtimez.io) is a read-only Kubernetes platform that tells you what breaks on your next Kubernetes or EKS upgrade, what is at risk in production right now, and why an incident happened. You install one read-only agent with Helm, and it works on EKS, GKE, AKS and any conformant cluster. Your first cluster is free.
Does Runtimez need write access to my cluster?
No. The Runtimez agent’s ClusterRole grants only get, list and watch, so it cannot create, change or delete anything in your cluster. It collects secret names but never secret values, the connection is outbound only, and the full ClusterRole ships in the Helm chart so your security team can review it before install.
How do I install Runtimez?
Add the chart with helm repo add runtimez https://charts.runtimez.io, then run helm install runtimez-agent runtimez/runtimez-agent --set token=<token> using the token from app.runtimez.io. The agent is read-only, and the first fleet risk score arrives in under an hour. Uninstalling is one helm command.
What does Runtimez check before a Kubernetes upgrade?
Runtimez checks 645 upgrade rules, each quoting the vendor’s release note with a read-only kubectl command to verify it: 72 Kubernetes rules for 1.30 to 1.37, 5 version-skew rules and 568 add-on rules for Traefik, Istio, CoreDNS, Argo CD, Karpenter, cert-manager, kube-proxy, EBS CSI driver and VPC CNI. It also flags config breakers and prices the forced-upgrade deadline.
How much does Runtimez cost?
Your first cluster is free. Paid tiers are usage-based and in early access. If you want a one-off answer instead, the Upgrade Readiness Audit is a fixed $750 for one cluster, delivered in five business days, read-only. The open-source kube-upgrade-check CLI is free and stays free.
How is Runtimez different from Datadog or Grafana?
Datadog and Grafana tell you what broke, from metrics, logs and traces. Runtimez tells you what will break before you change anything, such as an upgrade or a deploy, and why something broke afterwards, with every finding citing the vendor’s own wording. It does not replace your observability stack; it runs alongside it, read-only.
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