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Amazon EKS vs Kubernetes comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 13, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EKS
Ranking in Container Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (19th)
Kubernetes
Ranking in Container Management
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Amazon EKS is 12.2%, down from 13.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kubernetes is 5.4%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Rock Wang - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing complex environments effortlessly while focusing on growth
The most beneficial aspect of Amazon EKS is that it helps manage the Kubernetes master node, so I don't need to maintain the master node, including tasks like upgrading. This allows me to focus on business code. If using services like Fargate, I only need to maintain my workload, simply uploading code that will be deployed to the Kubernetes cluster. This is especially beneficial for startup companies that lack the technical resources to manage the Kubernetes cluster. Furthermore, Amazon EKS allows me to utilize Kubernetes cluster-level expansion. If there’s insufficient resource on a machine, the cluster can automatically expand to add new nodes.
Venu Boddu - PeerSpot reviewer
Manage infrastructure automation and smooth application deployment with robust auto-scaling capabilities
Kubernetes is highly valuable for its node-based setup, which allows for the running of multiple pods. This feature is essential for infrastructure automation and application deployment. Kubernetes also offers rollback control and auto-scaling capabilities, which are crucial for maintaining an application's availability even if nodes or pods go down. Additionally, Kubernetes supports load balancing to distribute traffic efficiently across multiple pods.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable features of Amazon EKS are its auto scaling ability and the ability for service discovery."
"Provides high performance and easy manageability."
"EKS has security features that you can't find in competing solutions."
"The stability is excellent."
"It's a faster solution to adopt on native applications."
"The most valuable feature is the cluster engine."
"The scalability has really helped us a lot in enhancing the customer experience and ensuring quick results."
"Amazon EKS can be used to implement and create clusters."
"The autoscaling feature is the most valuable. Kubernetes itself is an orchestration tool. It automatically detects the load, and it automatically spins up the new Pod in the form of a new microservice deployment."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the scalability."
"Kubernetes allows us to update without downtime and to easily deploy new software, which is very beneficial for our operations."
"A good interface, better than comparable solutions."
"The most valuable feature is the support for Docker containers."
"I like that it gives you all the flexibility, for example, auto-scaling. Everything is figured out exactly right. It manages all your workloads without much intervention. It can scale in, scale out, and with security. Everything looks pretty good compared to the old legacy way of working."
"Kubernetes also offers rollback control and auto-scaling capabilities, which are crucial for maintaining an application's availability even if nodes or pods go down."
"The solution is easy to use."
 

Cons

"I would like Amazon EKS to be easier to configure on various environments like Windows or Linux installations"
"I would like to see the user interface improved because it is hard to find and not straightforward."
"My first experience with Amazon EKS was difficult, and I would rate the initial setup as two because it was challenging without prior experience in microservices."
"The goal and idea behind microservices are to always be available and capable of handling any load, no matter how many requests come through...All of these services are great, but I also think it would be useful to have the same technology available in a miniature resource size, enabling the same applications and services to run on a small machine."
"A cluster is required on-premises, which takes a lot of time."
"I'd like to see the solution add a service catalog."
"It is very cumbersome to assign permissions to users to interact with a cluster."
"Amazon EKS's vulnerability management of data could be improved."
"It would be great if Kubernetes could handle a level of data backup."
"Currently, in Kubernetes, all of the health deployments or monitoring, and the discrete tools need to be configured. Changing this would make it much easier. Otherwise, we have to rely on a external tool to implement the monitoring."
"The configuration is a bit complicated."
"There is not a large ecosystem surrounding Kubernetes, making it difficult to identify the right problem due to the vast number of solutions."
"The plugins could be better. That is one pain point we had, and we had to get in with many other open standards, like Calico networking and more."
"In the financial service sector, I'd rate scalability an eight out of ten. But do it in a controlled manner, not auto-scaling. If your application has a bug and you enable the autoscaler, it will spike your costs. If someone deploys an application with a bug, that's automatically a problem."
"We faced a challenge while migrating and upgrading versions of Kubernetes."
"It would be nice if they could make it easier for developers and infrastructure staff to automate some of the pieces that they have to do manually at the moment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is quite costly and developers will start exploring other solutions or moving their workloads to other clouds if costs aren't reduced."
"Amazon EKS has fair pricing. It's better in terms of pricing than other platforms."
"I rate Amazon EKS’s pricing a nine out of ten."
"Pricing is dependent upon instance type."
"The solution is more expensive than other competitors and does not require a license."
"My company paid for the license."
"I would like a cheaper version of it."
"The solution's pricing is fair enough and a little less costly."
"The solution is affordable."
"It's an affordable solution"
"Pricing isn't a major concern for us. Since we resell Kubernetes services and focus on providing support, integration, and education, we don't usually have pricing issues. Our customers are more concerned with getting the right support and services than the cost. So, the value we provide is more important than the actual pricing. Pricing might change in the future, but it’s not a big issue for us right now."
"Google Kubernetes Engine is free in the simplest setup, AWS Kubernetes Engine costs about $50 (depending on the region), in a three master setup, so it's almost the same as the cost of the EC2 instances and it's totally fine from my point of view."
"The solution requires a license to use it."
"I am using the solution's open-source version."
"The solution is open source and has no fees."
"Microsoft provides reasonable costs for Kubernetes."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EKS?
The product's most valuable features are scalability, observability, and performance.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EKS?
We are making a significant effort to transform our usage of Amazon EKS, which was previously rated as eight or nine in terms of cost. Now, it stands at six or seven due to optimizing our workload.
What needs improvement with Amazon EKS?
I am not the right person to ask what could be improved in Amazon EKS to make this tool better for the next release. A continuation of the managed pieces would be beneficial because there is no int...
What do you like most about Kubernetes?
There are many good features. I feel that the scale-out features, like replica sets, are very good. The number of running containers can be autoscaled.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kubernetes?
Since we use Kubernetes on-premises, the costs are related to our expertise and the personnel we hire.
What needs improvement with Kubernetes?
Although we face issues when migrating to new versions of Kubernetes, such as misunderstandings on using new features or integration with proxy services, these issues can be addressed with proper p...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service
K8
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

GoDaddy, Pearson, FICO, Intuit, Verizon, Honeywell, Logicworks, RetailMeNot, LogMeIn, Conde Nast, mercari, Trainline, Axway
China unicom, NetEase Cloud, Nav, AppDirect
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EKS vs. Kubernetes and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.