She saw relatively limited service during the war, due to her commissioning late in the conflict. She was present during a brief engagement with British light forces in August 1917, though she did not actively participate in the battle. She joined the large task force assigned to Operation Albion in October 1917, but did not see significant action during that operation either. She was assigned to what was to have been the final sortie of the High Seas Fleet in the closing days of the war, but a large-scale mutiny in significant parts of the fleet forced the cancellation of the plan. "Karlsruhe" was interned in Scapa Flow after the end of the war, and scuttled there on 21 June 1919. Unlike most of the other ships sunk there, her wreck was never raised.