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Quickstart (Hosted SaaS)

Monitor your containers in under 5 minutes.

Get your first container metrics flowing into KubeWatch in three steps. There's no infrastructure to manage on your end.

Step 1: Create your account

Sign up at app.kubewatchlabs.com/signup. No credit card required. Every new account starts with a 30-day Enterprise trial automatically, regardless of which plan you picked at signup.

Once you're in, you'll land on the dashboard with an empty cluster summary. That's expected until your first agent connects.

Step 2: Copy your API key

Navigate to Settings → API Keys and click Create Key. Give it a descriptive name like prod-agent or my-homelab.

Copy the key now, since it's only shown once. If you lose it, you can revoke it and generate a new one from the same screen.

Your API key authenticates your agents to the KubeWatch gateway. Keep it secret and never commit it to version control. Use environment variables or a secrets manager.

Step 3: Deploy the agent

Choose the deployment method that matches your environment.

Kubernetes (Helm)

If you're running Kubernetes, install the agent with Helm:

helm upgrade --install kubewatch-agent \
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lloyd-theophilus/kubewatch-releases/main/kubewatch-agent.tgz \
  --namespace kubewatch --create-namespace \
  --set apiKey=YOUR_API_KEY

Replace YOUR_API_KEY with the key you copied in Step 2.

Verify the agent pod is running:

kubectl get pods -n kubewatch

You should see kubewatch-agent-... with status Running within about 30 seconds.

Docker (standalone)

If you're running plain Docker on a VM or bare-metal server:

docker run -d \
  --name kubewatch-agent \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  -e KUBEWATCH_API_KEY=YOUR_API_KEY \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  ghcr.io/lloyd-theophilus/kubewatch-agent:latest

Check the agent logs to confirm it connected:

docker logs kubewatch-agent

You should see a line like registered as agent agent_abc123 within a few seconds.

You're done

Head back to the dashboard. Your agent shows up in the agent selector within 30 seconds, and container metrics start populating right away.

Running multiple servers or clusters? Deploy the agent on each one using the same API key and give each agent a unique name with the `KUBEWATCH_AGENT_NAME` environment variable. See [Multiple Hosts / Agents](/agents/multiple-hosts) for details.

Next steps