We, the Headlamp project, don't make any claims about being state-of-the-art as that's hard to define. But we do think Headlamp ranks high among having the best user experience and believe the fact that we're a 100% open-source project is a huge plus compared to some other projects in the space.
I think one area that we are rather different than other projects is that Headlamp is not only focused on end-users but also for teams looking to build their own Kubernetes UX by leveraging the Headlamp plugin system. Our thinking is that this will foster broader community participation and make Headlamp the most viable project in the space.
I'm usually a fan of TUIs and think they can be incredibly powerful, but with k9s I couldn't feel comfortable in the day I spent trying it out. I think the problem is that I'm not intimately familiar with kubernetes, being more on the dev rather than ops side, and all that power of the TUI comes at the cost of some discoverability which I desperately need as I fuck around and find out.
I didn't try Headlamp, but I moved to AptKube from Lens and been happy since then. It might not be a best in class, but it is snappy and doesn't require any cloud accounts.
There is no free version and comparing to something like Jetbrains IDEs price is a bit high for such a small tool. It is made by a single dev in a market where not that many paying companies, so higher price is understandable.
