EKS vs AKS vs GKE cost comparison: what the three managed clusters actually cost

Quick answer

All three charge roughly the same control-plane fee: EKS is $0.10 per cluster-hour (about $73 per month), GKE charges $0.10 per cluster-hour with one zonal cluster free per billing account, and AKS gives you a Free tier at $0 with a Standard tier at $0.10 per hour for SLA-backed clusters. The real difference is everywhere else: worker nodes (typically 85 to 95 percent of the bill), load balancers, disks, and cross-zone traffic. A 10-node cluster on general-purpose 4 vCPU instances runs roughly $1,300 to $1,600 per month on all three, with AKS cheapest on the control plane and GKE cheapest on sustained-use discounts for long-running nodes.

Comparing EKS, AKS, and GKE on price is one of those questions where the headline answer is boring and the real answer matters a lot. The headline: the control plane costs about the same everywhere. The real answer: the control plane is 5 to 10 percent of a production cluster bill, and the other 90 percent depends on node pricing models, discount programs, load balancer charges, and what each platform gives you for free.

Control plane fees side by side

Service	Control plane rate	Per month	Free tier
Amazon EKS	$0.10 per cluster-hour	$73	None
AKS Free tier	$0	$0	No uptime SLA
AKS Standard tier	$0.10 per cluster-hour	$73	99.95 percent SLA
GKE Standard	$0.10 per cluster-hour	$73	One zonal cluster free

That free zonal GKE cluster and the AKS Free tier matter more than they look. A team running 12 dev and staging clusters pays $876 per month in EKS control-plane fees alone before a single pod schedules. The same 12 clusters on AKS Free tier cost $0 for the control plane. If you run many small non-production clusters, this single line can swing the comparison. See our breakdown ofAKS control plane cost and theGKE management fee for the details.

Where the money actually goes: nodes

Take a realistic mid-size cluster: 10 worker nodes at 4 vCPU and 16 GB each, running 24x7 in a US region. On AWS, m5.xlarge is $0.192 per hour on demand, so 10 nodes cost $1,402 per month. On Azure, D4s v5 is roughly $0.192 per hour, giving about the same $1,402. On GCP, n2-standard-4 lists at about $0.194 per hour but sustained use discounts apply automatically, cutting roughly 20 percent off nodes that run the full month, landing near $1,133.

Line item	EKS	AKS Standard	GKE Standard
Control plane	$73	$73	$73
10 x 4 vCPU nodes	$1,402	$1,402	$1,133
Node disks (10 x 100 GB)	$80	$77	$100
One L7 load balancer	$22	$18	$18
Monthly total	$1,577	$1,570	$1,324

Discount programs change the ranking

Those numbers are on-demand only, and nobody should run steady production capacity on demand. A 1-year Compute Savings Plan on AWS cuts m5.xlarge by about 28 percent, bringing the node line to $1,010. A 1-year Azure Reserved VM Instance cuts D4s v5 by roughly 36 percent, to about $897. GCP committed use discounts cut n2-standard-4 by about 37 percent off list, to roughly $893, and they replace rather than stack with sustained use. After commitments the three land within about 12 percent of each other, and the ranking flips depending on instance family and region.

Spot and preemptible capacity moves the needle far more than any platform choice. Spot instances on all three run 60 to 90 percent below on demand, so a cluster that runs 70 percent of its capacity on spot saves more than any control-plane or commitment difference. Our guide tospot nodes on Kubernetes covers the interruption handling that makes this safe.

The line items people forget

Load balancers: every Service of type LoadBalancer provisions a real cloud load balancer. AWS NLB is $0.0225 per hour plus LCU charges, about $22 per month minimum. Azure Standard Load Balancer is $0.025 per hour for the first five rules plus $0.005 per GB processed. GCP forwarding rules are $0.025 per hour for the first five plus per-GB processing. Ten services with their own load balancer is $180 to $220 per month that a single ingress controller would have made $22.

Cross-zone traffic: AWS charges $0.01 per GB in each direction between availability zones, so $0.02 per GB round trip. A chatty microservice mesh spread across three zones can push 20 TB per month of inter-zone chatter, which is $400. GCP charges $0.01 per GB between zones in a region. Azure now charges $0.01 per GB for availability zone traffic too. None of this appears in a cluster cost estimate that only counts nodes.

Node OS disks: AWS gp3 is $0.08 per GB-month, Azure Premium SSD sits near $0.077 per GB-month at the P10 size, and GCP balanced persistent disk is $0.10 per GB-month. On 10 nodes with 100 GB each that is a $20 to $30 monthly spread, small but real.

How to choose on cost

If you run many small clusters, AKS Free tier and the one free GKE zonal cluster are worth real money. If you run steady large clusters, GCP sustained use plus committed use discounts give the lowest effective node rate for general-purpose families. If your workloads are spiky and spot-friendly, all three converge because spot dominates the math. And in every case, the architectural decisions, ingress consolidation, zone topology, and pod right-sizing, matter more than the logo on the control plane. Price the cluster from Terraform against the resource catalog before you commit to a platform.

FAQ

Which is cheapest: EKS, AKS, or GKE?

On control plane fees, AKS Free tier is cheapest at $0, followed by GKE which gives one free zonal cluster per billing account, with EKS charging $73 per month per cluster with no free tier. On total cluster cost, GKE usually edges ahead for long-running nodes because sustained use discounts apply automatically, but after reserved instances or savings plans the three land within about 12 percent of each other.

How much does the Kubernetes control plane cost on each cloud?

EKS charges $0.10 per cluster-hour, about $73 per month, with no free tier. AKS offers a Free tier at $0 with no uptime SLA and a Standard tier at $0.10 per hour with a 99.95 percent SLA. GKE charges $0.10 per cluster-hour but gives one zonal cluster free per billing account. All three exclude worker nodes, which are billed separately.

What percentage of a Kubernetes bill is the control plane?

Typically 5 to 10 percent for a production cluster. A 10-node cluster with 4 vCPU nodes costs roughly $1,300 to $1,600 per month, of which the $73 control plane fee is about 5 percent. The control plane only dominates for tiny clusters, which is exactly why teams running many small dev clusters should care about free tiers.

Do load balancers cost extra on managed Kubernetes?

Yes, and they are a common surprise. Every Service of type LoadBalancer provisions a real cloud load balancer: about $22 per month minimum on AWS NLB, around $18 on Azure Standard Load Balancer and GCP forwarding rules, plus per-GB data processing. Ten services each with their own load balancer costs $180 to $220 per month where one shared ingress controller would cost about $22.

Does cross-zone traffic cost money in Kubernetes?

Yes. AWS charges $0.01 per GB in each direction between availability zones, so $0.02 per GB round trip. GCP charges $0.01 per GB between zones in a region and Azure now charges for availability zone traffic as well. A chatty service mesh spread across three zones moving 20 TB per month can add $400 that never appears in a node-only cost estimate.

How does C3X help compare managed Kubernetes cost?

C3X prices your Kubernetes infrastructure directly from Terraform, including node groups, disks, load balancers, and the control plane fee, against a live catalog. That lets you model the same cluster topology on EKS, AKS, and GKE and see the total before you commit, rather than discovering the load balancer and disk lines on the first invoice.

What to do next

Compare EKS, AKS, and GKE cost before you pick one. C3X reads your Terraform and prices your resources against a live catalog. Start with the quickstart.