Scaleway Kapsule vs K3s by Rancher
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Scaleway Kapsule and K3s by Rancher.
Quick Verdict
3.9/5
Scaleway Kapsule
0 reviews
4.1/5
K3s by Rancher
0 reviews
K3s by Rancher is rated higher (4.1 vs 3.9). Scaleway Kapsule is a managed Kubernetes service hosted entirely in EU datacenters (Paris, Amsterdam). GDPR-compliant, integrated with Scaleway's ecosystem, and competitively priced for EU requirements. K3s is a minimal certified Kubernetes distribution shipped as a single sub-70MB binary. Official minimums are 2 cores / 2GB RAM for a server node and 1 core / 512MB for an agent node. Built for edge computing, IoT, and CI/CD pipelines where full Kubernetes overhead is unnecessary.
Scaleway Kapsule EU-native managed Kubernetes — GDPR compliant | K3s by Rancher Lightweight Kubernetes distribution for resource-constrained environments | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.9 (0 reviews) | 4.1 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | freemium | free |
| Starting price | Free tier available | Free |
| Best for | European teams wanting managed Kubernetes with no control-plane fee, staying inside Scaleway's EU ecosystem and comfortable with documented platform limits | DevOps teams and builders deploying real Kubernetes on edge devices, IoT gateways, single-board clusters, CI runners, homelabs or air-gapped sites where a lightweight single-binary distribution beats full-fat Kubernetes. |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | 2 vCPU✓ | 1 vCPU |
| RAM | 2 GB✓ | 1 GB |
| Storage | — | — |
| Bandwidth | — | — |
| SLA uptime | — | — |
| Data-center count | 10 | — |
| €/vCPU/mo | €0.00 | €0.00 |
| €/GB RAM/mo | €0.00 | €0.00 |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ✓ | |
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ✓ | |
| Free tier | ||
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | FranceNetherlandsPolandItaly | — |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tiermanaged optioneu datacentergdpr compliantapi accessterraform provider | free tieropen sourceself hostable |
| Visit Scaleway Kapsule → | Visit K3s by Rancher → | |
Scaleway Kapsule
Pros
- + Free shared control plane — a 3-node cluster costs about €19.65/month all-in on entry nodes
- + CNCF-conformant vanilla Kubernetes with published version calendar and 14-month support per minor
- + Fully managed components: CCM, autoscaler, node autoheal after 15 minutes, Block/File CSI drivers
- + EU-only regions (Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Milan) under French law with ISO 27001 and HDS certifications
- + Complete API, CLI and Terraform coverage; Kosmos option to attach external nodes at zero control-plane cost
Cons
- - Control plane ingress sits behind a single-zone Load Balancer — a global zonal failure makes the API unreachable
- - No dual-stack IPv4/IPv6 and no ReadWriteMany/ReadOnlyMany storage support yet
- - Forced minor upgrades within 30 days of end of support, whether or not you have tested the version
- - No published Kapsule-specific SLA figure; support is the standard Scaleway ticket queue
- - Egress metered per GB on some classes and idle node pools bill around the clock
K3s by Rancher
Pros
- + Free, open source, CNCF sandbox project with full Kubernetes API conformance
- + Single sub-70MB binary with bundled containerd, Flannel, CoreDNS and Traefik — cluster up in under a minute
- + Documented hardware minimums and database sizing guides instead of vague marketing claims
- + Runs on x86_64, ARMv7 and ARM64 — from Raspberry Pi agents to large cloud servers
- + Flexible datastores: embedded SQLite or etcd for HA, plus MySQL, PostgreSQL and MariaDB
Cons
- - Stripped component set — some upstream Kubernetes features and in-tree plugins are absent
- - Multi-cluster management is a Rancher/SUSE Rancher Prime feature, not part of K3s
- - You own operations: upgrades, datastore integrity, network policy and security hardening
- - Enterprise support and long-term maintenance require buying into the SUSE Rancher stack
- - Community-scale ecosystem — GitHub issues and chat, no vendor-neutral enterprise backing
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