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

Related errors

• Failed to connect to server: connection refused (HTTP/2)

  How to fix "HTTP/2 connection refused" error in Kubernetes

  HIGH

• missing request for cpu in container

  How to fix "missing request for cpu in container" in Kubernetes HPA

  HIGH

• error: invalid configuration

  How to fix "error: invalid configuration" in Kubernetes

  HIGH

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)