Knative

Knative brings serverless to Kubernetes — scale-to-zero, request-based autoscaling, and traffic splitting for your containers. Think AWS Lambda's scale model but running on your own cluster with any container, not just function handlers.

If you're running Kubernetes and want serverless-style scaling without vendor lock-in, Knative is the most mature option. OpenFaaS is simpler and lighter for pure function-as-a-service workloads. Fission is another Kubernetes-native FaaS but with less community momentum. Commercially, AWS Lambda, Cloud Run (which is built on Knative), and Azure Container Apps offer managed serverless without the Kubernetes overhead.

Scale-to-zero is the headline feature. Your service costs nothing when idle and spins up on demand. Combined with traffic splitting, you get canary deployments for free.

The catch: you need Kubernetes. And not just any cluster — Knative's resource requirements are non-trivial. For indie hackers, the irony is thick: you're running a complex orchestration platform to get "serverless" behavior. Cloud Run gives you Knative's model without managing Kubernetes. Unless you're committed to multi-cloud or have compliance requirements, managed serverless is probably smarter.