How to Delete Load Balancers from Kubernetes Clusters
Validated on 17 May 2019 • Last edited on 14 Mar 2025
DigitalOcean Kubernetes (DOKS) is a Kubernetes service with a fully managed control plane, high availability, and autoscaling. DOKS integrates with standard Kubernetes toolchains and DigitalOcean’s load balancers, volumes, CPU and GPU Droplets, API, and CLI.
To delete a cluster’s load balancer with kubectl, use the delete service command:
kubectl delete service [NAME]When this command is successful, it both removes the load balancer from the cluster and deletes it from your account.
When you delete a cluster from the control panel, you can select the associated load balancers to delete them automatically. You can select a subset or all the load balancers associated with the cluster.
You can also manually delete the associated load balancers from the control panel. In the Networking section of the control panel, select Load Balancers. Open the load balancer’s More menu, select Edit settings, click Destroy, and confirm.
While you can currently delete volumes and load balancers from the control panel, we recommend using kubectl to manage all cluster-related resources.
You can also use doctl or the API to delete the associated resources automatically when you destroy a cluster.