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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
6.3
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (15th)
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 September 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Amazon EKS is 11.8%, down from 14.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kubernetes is 6.3%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon EKS11.8%
Kubernetes6.3%
Other81.9%
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Sameer Mirza - PeerSpot reviewer
Managed service ensures efficient monitoring and security with outstanding scalability
Amazon EKS's self-healing nodes help minimize administrative burdens in my organization by automating through all of Amazon EKS. We have used multiple types of automation tools which we directly integrate for the deployment purpose of the Amazon EKS cluster. We have integrated them with the Docker side of Amazon EKS, allowing the container service to run over there, so it is directly deployed for the administrative level of the Amazon EKS cluster. The benefits I have seen from Amazon EKS include a fully managed Kubernetes service for the control plane, the API server level, etcd scheduler, and controller. There's no need to worry about patching, scaling, and maintaining the master node. There is high availability over multiple availability zone control panels, and security compliance is guaranteed for IAM; AWS IAM users authenticate and access the control from the support VPC isolation and security group network policy. The integration with IAM helps enhance our authentication process because IAM basically helps with access. Nobody can enter with any kind of access, and any kind of vulnerability will be showing in my application. If I set an IAM user to that Amazon EKS cluster, that user will have limited access, and that application will run through that IAM user only. It is very beneficial, and for security purposes, it's also important because vulnerabilities will be found and block all the vulnerability and security issues if you set an IAM user to the Amazon EKS cluster with limited access.
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

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Amazon EKS is like Kubernetes, but it helps manage our nodes and scalability in AWS."
"The solution is easy-to-set up."
"It is the best service because it has proper security packages."
"The solution's Autoscaler option allows for an increase in worker notes whenever particular thresholds are exceeded."
"AWS EKS provides flexibility and scalability compared to on-premises Kubernetes."
"Amazon EKS's self-healing nodes help minimize administrative burdens in my organization by automating through all of Amazon EKS."
"Amazon EKS is a major tool for our application functionality and job purposes; it helps us at the orchestration level, allowing us to not worry about the entire deployment and service migration."
"Offers automated rollouts and storage orchestration"
"Auto-scaling and self-healing features are very good."
"We use it for various large microservice-based architectures and web services. That's the ideal use case, but it's suitable for any kind of service that can be decomposed and needs to be scaled. Of course, it's much easier to deploy services that are stateless. It"
"Kubernetes has everything. Its design structure is quite advanced, and its offerings are extensive. The practical feature was the seamless failover."
"It is a stable and scalable product."
"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 feature is the Zero Touch Operations, which involves a new way of performing operations and support. We do not have to do maintenance, the operations are very simple."
"Provision of a managed platform as a service."
 

Cons

"I would like Amazon EKS to be easier to configure on various environments like Windows or Linux installations"
"Amazon EKS is predominately public. However, the government has started to have a lot of interest in Kubernetes and is receiving more education on Kubernetes and Amazon EKS. If we can have the security of Amazon EKS align with the security that is set out by the government it would be much better."
"I would like to see the user interface improved because it is hard to find and not straightforward."
"Sometimes, we face minor connectivity issues. However, it depends on the applications we are using."
"The intent of starting with reduced costs using Amazon EKS doesn't hold as clearly when we consider it for the long run; we start with a low cost and then realize it doesn't justify that."
"Amazon EKS could improve in its pricing model, particularly for medium-sized customers who might find the support costs high."
"The management of the nodes in Amazon EKS should be improved."
"The initial setup for Amazon EKS is not straightforward. Kubernetes is not an easy technology because there are many technologies in the cluster."
"The lack of native support for billing and self-service capabilities is an area Kubernetes could improve. This requires the use of third-party integrations or managed services in order for customers to be able to deploy clusters on their own. It would be beneficial to have these features built-in into the Kubernetes platform."
"Some Kubernetes technical support would be helpful."
"Kubernetes is incredibly complicated, so one area of improvement is the ease of administration. I would like a user interface that you can run to help you debug and diagnose problems and suggest how to configure things."
"There are several areas where Kubernetes could improve."
"It would be very interesting if they could introduce a template engine to set dynamic values in the deployment time. It would be ideal if it could be native in Kubernetes as it would be much easier."
"The solution does not work with third-party tools, or alternative cloud providers, which limits the extent that we can utilize it to."
"We faced a challenge while migrating and upgrading versions of Kubernetes. After the upgrade, some pods were not up as expected, leading to downtime."
"Setup was not straightforward."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price could be cheaper. I would rate it as seven out of ten."
"The tool's pricing is good."
"Amazon EKS is not a cheap solution."
"Pricing is dependent upon instance type."
"My company paid for the license."
"Cloud based pay-as-you-go pricing"
"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 is very cost-effective."
"The management layer is free, which is perfect. You don't need to pay money for the management layer, but in AWS develop service, you need to pay. I think it is €75 per month for the management layer. It is free here, so you can have as many Kubernetes clusters as you need. You are paying just for the workload, that is, for the machine, CPU, memory, and everything."
"I am using the solution's open-source version."
"If you're using a public cloud, the cost depends on the number of nodes you are planning to deploy Kubernetes on."
"Kubernetes is open-source."
"It's an affordable solution"
"Kubernetes is free; it's open-source software."
"The price of Kubernetes could be lower. However, it is less expensive than VMware Tanzu. Additionally, technical support is expensive. The overall cost of the solution is approximately $1,000 annually."
"We use the solution's open-source version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
11%
Insurance Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise36
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise47
 

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?
The majority of my time setup cost was very affordable, taking just two hours. It was easy as I didn't have to worry about setting all the infrastructure underneath, just using what's there. This s...
What needs improvement with Amazon EKS?
One area I observed during setup was that while managing it through CLI and Terraform, there are many possibilities for setup and infrastructure updates. However, I believe the console experience c...
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: July 2025.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.