Amazon EKS vs Azure Kubernetes Service
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Amazon EKS and Azure Kubernetes Service.
Quick Verdict
3.9/5
Amazon EKS
0 reviews
3.9/5
Azure Kubernetes Service
0 reviews
Both Amazon EKS and Azure Kubernetes Service are equally rated at 3.9/5. Managed Kubernetes service that handles cluster operations, patching, and scaling. For teams running containerized workloads who want to reduce Kubernetes infrastructure overhead. Managed Kubernetes service that simplifies cluster deployment, scaling, and operations on Azure infrastructure. Built for teams running containerized applications at production scale.
 Amazon EKS AWS-managed Kubernetes with automatic control plane patching and scaling | Azure Kubernetes Service Enterprise Kubernetes on Azure with integrated DevOps and security | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.9 (0 reviews) | 3.9 (0 reviews) |
| Pricing model | paid | freemium |
| Starting price | From $73/mo | Free tier available✓ |
| Best for | Organizations already committed to AWS who need production Kubernetes without managing the control plane infrastructure | Organizations already on Azure that need production-grade managed Kubernetes with a financially backed SLA and enterprise identity and compliance integration |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ✓ | |
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ||
| Free tier | ✓ | |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | managed optionapi accessus datacentereu datacenterapac datacenterterraform provider | free tiermanaged optionapi accesseu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenterterraform provider |
| Visit Amazon EKS → | Visit Azure Kubernetes Service → | |
Amazon EKS
Pros
- + AWS-managed control plane across three AZs: no etcd, API server or upgrade operations
- + Upstream-conformant Kubernetes — standard manifests, operators and CNCF tooling work unchanged
- + Public, simple cluster fee ($0.10/hour) with no per-seat charges and no overage premiums on usage
- + Choice of EC2 managed node groups (including GPU and Graviton), Fargate serverless pods or Auto Mode
- + Deep AWS integration: IAM auth, VPC networking, EBS/ECR, Shield Standard DDoS protection, 39 regions
Cons
- - Extended support jumps to $0.60/hour per cluster after 14 months if versions are not upgraded
- - Total cost dominated by compute, storage and inter-AZ data transfer; bills are hard to forecast
- - Real AWS coupling through IAM, CSI drivers and ingress controllers despite Kubernetes conformance
- - Human support requires paid AWS Support plans on top of the platform costs
Azure Kubernetes Service
Pros
- + Free control-plane tier makes development and CI clusters genuinely cheap
- + Financially backed 99.95% API-server SLA on Standard tier with Availability Zones
- + Deep Azure integration: Entra ID RBAC, Monitor, Container Registry, DevOps pipelines, Arc hybrid
- + AKS Automatic removes most cluster operations for teams that want it
- + Upstream-conformant Kubernetes with GPU node pools and up to 5,000 nodes per cluster
Cons
- - Real lock-in to Azure identity, networking, storage, and monitoring beyond the portable YAML layer
- - Total cost is dominated by meters that are easy to underestimate (VMs, disks, log ingestion, egress)
- - Free tier has no SLA and is explicitly not meant for scale or high availability
- - Version support window forces regular upgrades unless you pay for Premium long-term support
- - Managed control plane is not a managed platform — node and workload operations remain yours on Standard
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