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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
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
50
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 June 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Elastic Container Service is 1.4%, down from 2.4% 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

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

"Amazon Elastic Container Service is more stable."
"Amazon EC2 Container Service is a stable solution."
"The cloud services are readily available."
"For Amazon EC2 Container Service, providing the ability for users to select specific processor, memory, disk, and interface types might be an ideal feature. But, the practicality of offering all possible physical combinations is nearly impossible due to the underlying physical machines. AWS and Azure organize options into groups based on essential components like powerful processors or critical interfaces, considering physical restrictions. While expanding these choices is conceivable, it may not be feasible from a financial and practical perspective. Customers generally comprehend this limitation, as even in their own data centers, exact physical machine requirements are often a result of a combination of factors such as price, availability, and new machine generations."
"The solution has good performance."
"It has an Auto Scaling group feature. We can use this feature to have an Auto Scaling group to specify a minimum and maximum count for all types of configurations. Based on the specified values, Amazon Elastic Container Service scales the required CPU environmental metrics."
"Amazon Elastic Container Service serves the function it's supposed to serve."
"It is a highly stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of Kubernetes is automation. It is the best tool for automation."
"Kubernetes is highly valuable for its node-based setup, which allows for the running of multiple pods."
"It has a complete loading feature set for replica site deployment."
"Once you get it configured properly, it's a stable solution."
"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."
"The tool's most valuable feature is the auto-scaling feature. However, Kubernetes is not used alone; it is part of a complete deployment pipeline integrated with DevOps. This pipeline includes automation and deployment capabilities."
"Kubernetes offers a lot of great features such as scalability and great portability of applications."
"It is a very good solution for deploying microservices in an application. It has a lot of freedom in it, which makes it very interesting. It is also web-enabled. You can run services in other virtual applications and virtual machines."
 

Cons

"The solution’s UI should be improved."
"We noticed a problem where our container doesn't always run, and the traffic in our secured license exceeds 100%, leading to increased container costs. We are working to understand and reduce this traffic to control costs."
"The solution is expensive compared to other alternatives like Azure."
"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."
"The solution's user experience and management are really bad."
"Amazon EC2 Container Service needs to improve the menu design. It needs to improve deployment with better documentation."
"The existing domain-joined capability the solution provides during the initial boot-up of the compute should be streamlined and made a little robust."
"My company has faced some stability issues with Amazon EC2 Container Service."
"The virtual machines should be GUI-based"
"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."
"Kubernetes could improve by having better integration with VMware solutions."
"Community-based Kubernetes is quite hard to set up."
"The solution does not work with third-party tools, or alternative cloud providers, which limits the extent that we can utilize it to."
"Kubernetes could adopt UI-based approach. A UI-based approach would be really useful in the CI/CD pipeline. They should make everything a little bit more user-friendly. For example, when I'm deploying, it would be nice to load my code and be able to see which components need to be connected."
"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."
"It's complex to manage and requires specialists."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon Elastic Container Service is an expensive solution."
"Licensing can be purchased directly from AWS or used with existing licenses, depending on the company's preference. The licensing structure is complex and depends on factors such as machine size, number of processors, and Container size. Companies have dedicated staff members managing license considerations full-time to find the most cost-effective options. Also, I have seen some companies opt for a combination of AWS and Azure, using more of Azure for Microsoft licenses due to potentially lower costs compared to AWS."
"Amazon EC2 Container Service is cheap."
"If you increase the sizes, you incur costs to your accounts."
"I don't know the exact amount we were charged for our use of ECS, but I do know that it can be costly, especially when there is a bug or an error caused by default configurations."
"Amazon EC2 Container Service is priced high."
"The platform is inexpensive."
"Amazon EC2 Container Service is an expensive solution."
"In addition to Kubernetes, you have to pay for support."
"There is no licensing fee."
"Kubernetes is open-source. Kubernetes is free, but we're charged for AWS utilization."
"You need to pay for a license if you buy branded products. For example, if you take the services from Azure, AWS, or Google, the price of the Kubernetes cluster is inclusive of the service that's being offered to us on a pay-and-use model."
"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."
"There are no licensing fees."
"Kubernetes is open source and is an orchestration platform. It is a cost effective solution and its pricing depends on your company and how you use it"
"The solution is affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
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 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: June 2025.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.