Helm Revision Calculator

Calculate how much release history storage accumulates across Helm revisions.

About Helm Revision Calculator

Every `helm upgrade` creates a new revision record while Helm prunes the oldest ones once the count exceeds `--history-max` (default 10; 0 disables pruning entirely). The in-cluster storage cost of this history is simply the number of retained revisions multiplied by the size of each stored manifest, which is why charts with very large rendered manifests should use a lower history-max to avoid unbounded Secret/ConfigMap growth.

Formula

storage = maxHistory × manifestSize

H: Max history (revisions retained)
M: Manifest size per revision in KB
S: Total revision storage in KB

Worked example

With the default values below, Helm Revision Calculator returns Revisions Stored of 10. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.

Inputs used

Max History (--history-max)accepts 0–1,000 revisions: 10 revisions
Manifest Size per Revisionaccepts 0–1,000,000 KB: 45 KB

Results

Revisions Stored: 10 revisions
Total Revision Storage: 0.439 MB

Step by step

1Revisions stored = max history= 10 revisions
2Storage = revisions × manifest size= 450.0KB (0.44MB)

Assumptions and limits

The result is derived only from the 2 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax, fees or charges or compounding frequency into account.
Figures are rounded for display to 3 decimal places, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.

How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens if --history-max is set to 0?

Helm retains every revision ever created for that release indefinitely — useful for full audit trails, but storage grows without bound as upgrades accumulate over the release's lifetime.

Does pruning old revisions affect rollback capability?

Yes — once a revision is pruned it can no longer be targeted by `helm rollback <release> <revision>`; only the retained window of recent revisions remains available for rollback.

What's a sensible history-max for most releases?

The default of 10 is reasonable for most workloads; teams that upgrade very frequently (many times per day) often lower it to 3–5 to bound storage, while compliance-sensitive releases sometimes raise it or externalize history to Git instead.