How to fix unable to get metrics: no metrics found for target in Kubernetes

What this error means

HPA queries the metrics API to fetch metric values (CPU, memory, custom). When the metrics API is unavailable, unresponsive, or has no data for the target, HPA cannot make scaling decisions. This blocks autoscaling completely—HPA will keep the current replica count and report "Unknown" status.

Typical symptoms

• HPA status shows "unknown" for all metrics
• kubectl get hpa returns "unknown" for current/desired
• HPA events: "unable to get metrics for Deployment"
• Metrics API returns empty results
• kubectl top pods returns "error: metrics not available yet"
• metrics-server running but not collecting data
• HPA conditions show "false" for all types

Common causes

1. metrics-server pods crashed or not running
2. metrics-server cannot scrape kubelet metrics
3. kubelet not exposing metrics endpoint
4. Network connectivity between metrics-server and nodes broken
5. RBAC permissions missing for metrics-server
6. Metrics freshness threshold exceeded (older than 1 minute)
7. Pod metrics not initialized (fresh pod or metrics delay)

How to fix "unable to get metrics: no metrics found for target"

Advanced notes

Frequently asked questions

What does "unable to get metrics: no metrics found for target" mean?

HPA queries the metrics API to fetch metric values (CPU, memory, custom). When the metrics API is unavailable, unresponsive, or has no data for the target, HPA cannot make scaling decisions. This blocks autoscaling completely—HPA will keep the current replica count and report "Unknown" status.

How do I fix "unable to get metrics: no metrics found for target"?

HorizontalPodAutoscaler cannot access metric data because metrics-server is not running, pod metrics are incomplete, or the metrics API is not responding.

What causes "unable to get metrics: no metrics found for target"?

metrics-server pods crashed or not running metrics-server cannot scrape kubelet metrics kubelet not exposing metrics endpoint

Is the "unable to get metrics: no metrics found for target" error serious?

Yes. This is a high-severity error that usually blocks work until it is fixed, but the steps above resolve it.

Related errors

• unable to fetch metrics from API

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• unable to compute replica count: the metrics for metric was not available

  How to fix "HPA invalid metric" error in Kubernetes

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• failed to get cpu utilization: unable to get metrics

  How to fix "failed to get cpu utilization: unable to get metrics" in Kubernetes

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• Permission denied when accessing hostPath volume

  How to fix "HostPath permission denied" error in Kubernetes

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• upstream connect error or disconnect/reset before headers. reset reason: overflow

  How to fix "upstream connect error or disconnect/reset before headers" in Kubernetes

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• Waiting for rollout to finish

  How to fix "Waiting for rollout to finish" in Kubernetes

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Official resources & further reading

• 📚Kubernetes Official Documentation
• 📖
  Kubernetes API Reference(Official Docs)
• 📖
  Kubernetes Tasks: Run Applications(Official Docs)
• 💬
  Stack Overflow: Kubernetes hpa metrics not available(Stack Overflow)
• 🐙
  Kubernetes GitHub Issues(GitHub)