Quickstart Guide

This guide covers how you can quickly get started using Helm.

Prerequisites

The following prerequisites are required for a successful and properly secured use of Helm.

1. A Kubernetes cluster
2. Deciding what security configurations to apply to your installation, if any
3. Installing and configuring Helm.

Install Kubernetes or have access to a cluster

• You must have Kubernetes installed. For the latest release of Helm, we recommend the latest stable release of Kubernetes, which in most cases is the second-latest minor release.
• You should also have a local configured copy of kubectl.

See the Helm Version Support Policy for the maximum version skew supported between Helm and Kubernetes.

Install Helm

Download a binary release of the Helm client. You can use tools like homebrew, or look at the official releases page.

For more details, or for other options, see the installation guide.

Find Charts to Install

Artifact Hub is the best place to discover Helm charts. It aggregates charts from hundreds of repositories and provides search, metadata, and security information.

Popular chart sources include:

• OCI registries: Many organizations publish charts to container registries like GitHub Container Registry, Docker Hub, or cloud provider registries. You can install these directly with the oci:// prefix.
• Chart repositories: Traditional Helm repositories can be added with helm repo add and searched with helm search repo.

To search Artifact Hub from the command line:

$ helm search hub podinfo
URL                                                 CHART VERSION  APP VERSION  DESCRIPTION
https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/podinfo/po...  6.11.2         6.11.2       Podinfo Helm chart for Kubernetes

Install a Chart from an OCI Registry

Helm can install charts directly from OCI-compliant container registries. This approach doesn't require adding a repository first.

To install a chart from an OCI registry, use the oci:// prefix:

$ helm install my-podinfo oci://ghcr.io/stefanprodan/charts/podinfo --version 6.11.2
Pulled: ghcr.io/stefanprodan/charts/podinfo:6.11.2
NAME: my-podinfo
LAST DEPLOYED: Sat May  3 12:05:00 2026
NAMESPACE: default
STATUS: deployed
REVISION: 1
NOTES: ...

To verify the installation works, forward the service port and test the endpoint:

$ kubectl port-forward svc/my-podinfo 9898:9898 &
$ curl http://localhost:9898
{
  "hostname": "podinfo-6f89b4c6b5-xvwtb",
  "version": "6.7.1",
  "message": "greetings from podinfo v6.7.1",
  "goos": "linux",
  "goarch": "amd64",
  ...
}

You can preview what a chart contains before installing:

$ helm show chart oci://ghcr.io/stefanprodan/charts/podinfo --version 6.11.2

For more details on working with OCI registries, see Use OCI-based registries.

Learn About Releases

It's easy to see what has been released using Helm:

$ helm list
NAME       	NAMESPACE	REVISION	UPDATED                             	STATUS  	CHART         	APP VERSION
my-podinfo 	default  	1       	2026-05-03 12:05:00.000000 +0000 UTC	deployed	podinfo-6.11.2	6.7.1

The helm list (or helm ls) function will show you a list of all deployed releases.

Uninstall a Release

To uninstall a release, use the helm uninstall command:

$ helm uninstall my-podinfo
release "my-podinfo" uninstalled

This will uninstall my-podinfo from Kubernetes, which will remove all resources associated with the release as well as the release history.

If the flag --keep-history is provided, release history will be kept. You will be able to request information about that release:

$ helm status my-podinfo
Status: UNINSTALLED
...

Because Helm tracks your releases even after you've uninstalled them, you can audit a cluster's history, and even undelete a release (with helm rollback).

Reading the Help Text

To learn more about the available Helm commands, use helm help or type a command followed by the -h flag:

$ helm get -h