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Amazon Elastic Container Service 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 Elastic Container Se...
Ranking in Container Management
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
Containers as a Service (CaaS) (1st)
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 August 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Elastic Container Service is 1.4%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kubernetes is 6.3%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

FABIO NAGAO - PeerSpot reviewer
Horizontal scaling is streamlined when deploying modern workloads
Currently, when scaling with Amazon Elastic Container Service, I have to choose between monitoring CPU or memory usage to scale up or scale out; there is no option to monitor both simultaneously. This limitation makes it challenging to define a balanced scale-out automation since a well-written software should balance between processing and memory.
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 solution's technical support is good."
"The solution is simple to access."
"Performance is our top priority. So, if we need to deploy on a high-specification machine, we can choose it from the software. If we just need a low-specification one, we can just choose it based on the requirement handling software configuration."
"They handle the backup process quite well. They automatically encapsulate it, including container backups, without relying heavily on the client's involvement. This is a significant advantage compared to other providers where clients often need to manage the process more independently. It's a feature that I find suitable and beneficial."
"What I really like about Amazon ECS is its simplicity and ease of use. Amazon also has really good security."
"It is a highly stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The solution is easy to scale and implement and provides performance monitoring and management tools."
"For me, the best feature of ECS is Fargate because I don't have to manage anything. Instead, everything is managed by AWS and all I have to do, in essence, is configure my containers and deploy them."
"The deployment is one of the most valuable feature."
"Kubernetes has everything. Its design structure is quite advanced, and its offerings are extensive. The practical feature was the seamless failover."
"I like Kubernetes' scalability, built-in redundancy, and ease of deployment."
"Offers automated rollouts and storage orchestration"
"I found it to be an excellent solution for application deployment. It's great for containerization."
"If you're switching from VMs to Kubernetes, you will see a return because you can pack more into the Kubernetes architecture using containers rather than VMs. You'll see some more savings on your infrastructure, as well."
"A good interface, better than comparable solutions."
"Provides auto rollback and scale-up and scale-down functionalities."
 

Cons

"The solution's user experience and management are really bad."
"The pricing could be a bit better."
"Amazon Elastic Container Service should simplify its management. It can be difficult for someone who doesn't have much experience with the tool. Also, the tool needs to add the ability to manage networks."
"Billing is extremely complex."
"The solution's pricing could be improved."
"I think that it would help if the vendor provided more use cases and explanations as to how ECS can be utilized."
"The solution needs to be more usable."
"My company has faced some stability issues with Amazon EC2 Container Service."
"There is room for improvement in this area, as Kubernetes could benefit from having more integrations, such as for scanning vulnerabilities."
"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."
"I'm expecting more improvement on the UI development side, which can be reflected in each object that is part of Kubernetes, like the Pod, deployment set, ReplicaSet, ConfigMap, Secrets, and PersistentVolume."
"The solution has some issues regarding availability during high loads. Worker nodes are sometimes unavailable, affecting the overall availability of the applications. This is a bug or underlying problem with the tool, and Azure and other providers are looking into improving this by releasing new versions of Kubernetes that fix some of the platform's issues."
"I'm a beginner, and I recently started working with Kubernetes. As of now, I don't see any bugs. However, it would be better if it could be deployed without coding."
"There are features in Google Cloud or AWS that aren't in Azure. They need to implement a couple more tools in Azure."
"They should update Kubernetes more regularly."
"The solution does not work with third-party tools, or alternative cloud providers, which limits the extent that we can utilize it to."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon Elastic Container Service's price is good."
"The tool's cost is good."
"The platform is inexpensive."
"Our client is paying between $400 and $500 USD per month for this service."
"Amazon EC2 Container Service is cheap."
"If you increase the sizes, you incur costs to your accounts."
"Amazon EC2 Container Service is worth the money."
"There is no need to pay anything towards the licensing costs of Amazon EC2 Container Service."
"In addition to Kubernetes, you have to pay for support."
"Kubernetes is open source. But we have to manage Kubernetes as a team, and the overhead is a bit high. Compared with the platforms like Cloud Foundry, which has a much less operational overhead. Kubernetes, I have to manage the code, and I have to hire the developers. If someone has a product, a developer should know exactly what he's writing or high availability, and all those things may differ the costs."
"The solution requires a license to use it."
"We use the solution's open-source version."
"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 is open source and has no fees."
"This is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs associated with its use."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Elastic Container Service?
Implementing the product has helped me monitor the parameters. I utilize tools like CloudWatch and AWS systems to track these parameters. If any issues arise, I alert our developer team to address ...
What needs improvement with Amazon Elastic Container Service?
The solution must improve backup and compatibility around OS like Windows and Mac.
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 ECS, Amazon EC2 Container Service
K8
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ubisoft, GoPro, TIBCO, Remind
China unicom, NetEase Cloud, Nav, AppDirect
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Elastic Container Service vs. Kubernetes and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.