Kubernetes Cost Comparison 2026: EKS vs AKS vs GKE Pricing
AKS has a free control plane. EKS and GKE charge $73/month. But the control plane is a trivial cost compared to nodes, networking, and storage. This is the full picture.
Control Plane Pricing
AWS EKS
$73
/month per cluster
$0.10/hour. No free tier.
Azure AKS
Free
Standard tier
Uptime SLA tier: $0.10/hour ($73/mo)
GCP GKE
$73
/month (Standard)
Autopilot: free (included in pod pricing)
Total Cluster Cost: Production Workload
3 nodes, 4 vCPU / 16 GB each. General purpose instances. US-East region.
| Component | AWS EKS | Azure AKS | GCP GKE |
|---|---|---|---|
| Control Plane | $73.00 | $0.00 | $73.00 |
| Node Compute (3x) | $364.00 | $363.00 | $366.00 |
| Load Balancer | $16.20 (ALB min) | $18.00 (Standard LB) | $18.00 (HTTP(S) LB) |
| Persistent Storage (100 GB x3) | $24.00 (gp3) | $28.80 (E series) | $51.00 (pd-ssd) |
| Cross-Zone Networking (est.) | $30.00 | $15.00 | $20.00 |
| Total Monthly | $507.20 | $424.80 | $528.00 |
AKS is cheapest for this configuration primarily due to the free control plane. At scale (10+ nodes), node compute dominates and the control plane cost becomes negligible.
Serverless Kubernetes: Autopilot vs Fargate
GKE Autopilot
Pay per pod resource
- $0.0445/vCPU/hr (compute)
- $0.0049/GB/hr (memory)
- No node management overhead
- Automatic scaling, updates, and security patches
- Best for: variable workloads, teams without K8s node expertise
EKS Fargate
Pay per pod resource
- $0.04048/vCPU/hr (compute)
- $0.004445/GB/hr (memory)
- Each pod runs in its own VM (stronger isolation)
- No DaemonSets, limited storage options
- Best for: security-sensitive workloads, simple deployments
Networking Costs in Kubernetes
The hidden killer. Cross-zone traffic, service mesh overhead, and load balancer costs often exceed control plane costs by 10-50x.
AWS EKS
- $0.01/GB cross-AZ traffic
- ALB minimum $16.20/month per ingress
- NAT Gateway $0.045/GB for outbound from private subnets
Azure AKS
- Intra-VNET traffic: free
- Standard LB: $18/month + $0.005/rule/hr
- Cross-region: varies by zone pair
GCP GKE
- $0.01/GB cross-zone traffic
- HTTP(S) LB: $18/month minimum
- Cloud NAT: per-VM charge for outbound
Kubernetes Cost Management Tools
| Tool | Type | Cost | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kubecost | Open source + enterprise | Free tier / $199+/mo enterprise | Real-time cost allocation by namespace, label, deployment |
| OpenCost | Open source (CNCF) | Free | Kubernetes-native cost monitoring. CNCF sandbox project. |
| Vantage | SaaS | Free tier / $250+/mo | Multi-cloud K8s cost reporting with provider cost integration |
| Cast AI | SaaS + automation | Free monitoring / paid optimisation | Automated K8s cost optimisation with Spot instance management |