Helm Cheatsheet 2025

Helm is a tool for managing Charts. Charts are packages of pre-configured Kubernetes resources.

Key Use Cases

• Find and use popular software packaged as Helm Charts to run in Kubernetes
• Share your own applications as Helm Charts
• Create reproducible builds of your Kubernetes applications
• Intelligently manage your Kubernetes manifest files
• Manage releases of Helm packages

Popularity & Stats

• 24.1K+ GitHub Stars
• 7.2K+ Forks
• 1000+ Contributors
• 40K+ Weekly Docker Downloads
• Used by 65% of Kubernetes users (CNCF Survey 2023)

This cheatsheet provides a quick reference for common Helm commands and configurations.

Basic Commands

Command	Description
helm create mychart	Initialize a new Helm chart
helm install release-name chart-name	Install a chart
helm install release-name chart-name --namespace my-namespace	Install a chart in specific namespace
helm install release-name chart-name --values values.yaml	Install with custom values
helm upgrade release-name chart-name	Upgrade a release
helm upgrade --install release-name chart-name	Install or upgrade if exists
helm rollback release-name revision-number	Rollback to a previous version
helm list	List all releases
helm ls --all-namespaces	List releases across all namespaces
helm ls -n namespace	List releases in a namespace
helm uninstall release-name	Uninstall a release

Repository Management

Command	Description
helm repo add repo-name repo-url	Add a repository
helm repo update	Update repositories
helm repo list	List repositories
helm repo remove repo-name	Remove a repository
helm search repo chart-name	Search in repositories
helm search hub chart-name	Search in Artifact Hub

Chart Management

Command	Description
helm package chart-path/	Package a chart
helm lint chart-path/	Verify chart
helm show chart chart-name	Show chart details
helm show values chart-name	Show chart values
helm show all chart-name	Show all chart information
helm pull repo-name/chart-name	Pull a chart
helm pull repo-name/chart-name --untar	Pull and extract a chart

Testing and Debugging

Command	Description
helm install release-name chart-name --dry-run --debug	Test installation
helm get manifest release-name	Get manifest
helm get values release-name	Get release values
helm history release-name	Get release history
helm status release-name	Get release status

Template Commands

Command	Description
helm template release-name chart-name	Render templates locally
helm template release-name chart-name --values values.yaml	Render with values
helm lint chart-path/	Validate templates
helm get manifest release-name	Show computed templates

Dependencies

Command	Description
helm dependency update chart-path/	Update dependencies
helm dependency list chart-path/	List dependencies
helm dependency build chart-path/	Build dependencies

Chart Structure

File/Directory	Purpose
Chart.yaml	Chart metadata
values.yaml	Default values
values.schema.json	Values schema
charts/	Chart dependencies
templates/	Template files
templates/NOTES.txt	Usage notes
templates/_helpers.tpl	Named templates
templates/deployment.yaml	Kubernetes manifests

Environment Values

Command	Description
helm install -f values-dev.yaml	Install with dev values
helm install -f values-prod.yaml	Install with prod values
helm install -f values.yaml -f values-prod.yaml	Install with multiple values

Common Configuration Values

Field	Description
replicaCount	Number of replicas
image.repository	Container image repository
image.tag	Container image tag
image.pullPolicy	Image pull policy
service.type	Service type
service.port	Service port
resources.limits	Resource limits
resources.requests	Resource requests
ingress.enabled	Enable ingress
ingress.className	Ingress class