Amazon Elastic Container Service vs Kubernetes comparison

Amazon Elastic Container Se...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 13, 2024

Amazon Elastic Container Service and Kubernetes are leading competitors in the container orchestration market. AWS ECS appears to have the upper hand with its ease of use and cost-effectiveness, while Kubernetes is favored for its flexibility and robust orchestration capabilities.

Features: Amazon ECS is known for its scalability, auto-scaling options, and pay-as-you-go billing model. It seamlessly integrates with other AWS services, offering stability and efficient resource management. Kubernetes excels in container orchestration and supports multi-cloud environments. It allows developers to manage workloads with high availability and flexibility, crucial for scaling across diverse platforms.

Room for Improvement: Amazon ECS could improve in instance management optimization, monitoring simplification, and billing clarity. Initial setup can be complex for some users. Kubernetes, known for its steep learning curve, especially challenges those without Linux expertise. It requires enhancements in UI development, security integration, and better-built monitoring tools, along with improved logging functionalities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon ECS is appreciated for straightforward deployment and strong scalability, particularly in public cloud environments. Customer service varies; some users report insufficient technical guidance. Kubernetes supports diverse environments but is noted for its complexity, requiring specialized knowledge. Its community-driven support is broad, but official support might be costly and less direct.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon ECS's pay-as-you-go model is cost-effective for larger operations, offering scalability without hefty upfront costs, though configuration issues can lead to unexpected expenses. Kubernetes, being open-source, eliminates licensing costs but may incur management expenses. It offers cost-efficiency in large deployments, but smaller firms might face challenges due to operational overheads. Both platforms deliver ROI, with ECS users noting clearer financial benefits from scalable costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Elastic Container Service vs. Kubernetes Report (Updated: December 2025).

Amazon Elastic Container Service vs. Kubernetes

December 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score

3.3

Clients reduced costs significantly with AWS ECS, benefiting from efficient resource management and a pay-as-you-go model.

Sentiment score

8.5

Organizations see varied ROI from Kubernetes, influenced by expertise, scaling, technology adoption, and transitioning from VMs.

This saving is achieved since, with EC2, the entire virtual machine must be running regardless of workload, whereas Fargate eliminates this cost.

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Chief Technology Officer at Looplex SA

We receive revenue and returns from its deployment due to improved services and applications.

Scholar Trainee/Project Engineer at Wipro Limited

I have seen a return on investment, and the metrics in return for the investment are very fast.

For more quotes and insights, download the Kubernetes report

Site Reliability Engineer at Tiendanube

Customer Service

Sentiment score

7.7

Amazon Elastic Container Service support is responsive and helpful, but costly with occasional expertise gaps and limited documentation.

Sentiment score

6.2

Kubernetes support is community-driven, with users favoring self-help, vendor options, and experiencing varied satisfaction levels with official channels.

AWS partnership provides access to their architects for guidance when needed.

ShitanshuChandra

Head of Products at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

We do not rely heavily on technical support from AWS as we have our own teams managing the infrastructure.

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General Manager at Vodafone Idea Ltd.

The application is stable, and I seldom require support.

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Scholar Trainee/Project Engineer at Wipro Limited

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

7.2

Amazon ECS boasts strong scalability, praised for workload management, resource flexibility, yet noted for potential reactivity issues.

Sentiment score

8.0

Kubernetes efficiently scales for all sizes, supports horizontal and vertical growth, and integrates well with cloud services.

Amazon Elastic Container Service has significant limitations regarding scalability.

Alexander Gomez

Lead Developer at Virtual Restaurant Solutions

Amazon Elastic Container Service has a scalability rating of ten out of ten.

Chief Technology Officer at Looplex SA

Scalability becomes an inherent capability in the cloud context, and this service does well in that regard.

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General Manager at Vodafone Idea Ltd.

Kubernetes is highly scalable, earning a rating of eight out of ten.

Scholar Trainee/Project Engineer at Wipro Limited

By using horizontal pod autoscalers, Kubernetes automatically adjusts the number of pods based on CPU, memory usage, or other metrics.

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AWS DevOps Engineer at Hexaware Technologies Limited

Kubernetes is a scalable platform, which is why we are using it.

Hitesh D

Senior Manager at pnb metlife

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

6.1

Amazon ECS is highly stable with minimal issues, though configuration adjustments may require technical expertise for optimal performance.

Sentiment score

7.3

Kubernetes is stable and reliable, supported by extensive testing, automated repairs, and handles high-loads efficiently, despite occasional issues.

The stability of Amazon Elastic Container Service is excellent.

Chief Technology Officer at Looplex SA

Amazon Elastic Container Service is mostly very stable.

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General Manager at Vodafone Idea Ltd.

Our organization performs robust testing before sending changes to production, ensuring the stability of Kubernetes in live environments.

AWS DevOps Engineer at Hexaware Technologies Limited

If any containers take more space, sometimes the cluster goes down.

Hitesh D

Senior Manager at pnb metlife

Kubernetes offers high stability, allowing for easy scaling of ports and containers.

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Scholar Trainee/Project Engineer at Wipro Limited

Room For Improvement

Amazon Elastic Container Service struggles with reliability, user-friendliness, integration, and cost, requiring improved security and management simplification.

Kubernetes needs improved UI, security, management, cloud integration, and native features to enhance user experience and simplify processes.

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.

Chief Technology Officer at Looplex SA

When it comes to new-age services around AI, particularly in the areas of LLMs and genomics, these services are not fully available in our region's availability domain.

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General Manager at Vodafone Idea Ltd.

A lower price for Amazon Elastic Container Service would be better, but it is comparable to other offerings in the market, so it is on par in that sense.

ShitanshuChandra

Head of Products at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Improved documentation would help in gaining scalable knowledge and making it more understandable.

Scholar Trainee/Project Engineer at Wipro Limited

The upgrade process required addressing these failures and adjusting for changes made by external services such as the AWS CodeBuild.

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AWS DevOps Engineer at Hexaware Technologies Limited

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 preparation.

Aleksandr Motuzov

Head of Data Science center of excellence at Ameriabank CJSC

Setup Cost

Amazon ECS features pay-as-you-go pricing, praised for scalability but sometimes costly compared to competitors, with no license fees.

Kubernetes is affordable for large enterprises but can be costly for smaller entities due to variable infrastructure and operational costs.

Amazon Elastic Container Service is quite cheap compared to Google, particularly for hosting databases.

Chief Technology Officer at Looplex SA

Our customers often do a trade-off between requiring services at particular SLA levels and being willing to pay a premium price to us as partners.

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General Manager at Vodafone Idea Ltd.

Since we use Kubernetes on-premises, the costs are related to our expertise and the personnel we hire.

Aleksandr Motuzov

Head of Data Science center of excellence at Ameriabank CJSC

the setup costs are high.

For more quotes and insights, download the Kubernetes report

Site Reliability Engineer at Tiendanube

Valuable Features

Amazon ECS offers auto-scaling, cost-effectiveness, easy AWS integration, excellent security, and efficient resource management with Fargate support.

Kubernetes excels in scalability, automation, and container management, offering self-healing, cloud integration, and efficient microservices deployment.

Main benefits that Amazon Elastic Container Service provides include saving maintenance costs in terms of saving time, and since it auto scales, we save on infrastructure costs by running at lower instances when it is not heavily used.

ShitanshuChandra

Head of Products at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

It inherently offers scalability by default, without our IT teams needing to take the extra load to make the services available for our end users.

General Manager at Vodafone Idea Ltd.

Amazon Elastic Container Service makes horizontal scaling easy and is especially effective when working under the ECS service.

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Chief Technology Officer at Looplex SA

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.

AWS DevOps Engineer at Hexaware Technologies Limited

Kubernetes has positively impacted my organization as 99% of microservices are running.

For more quotes and insights, download the Kubernetes report

Site Reliability Engineer at Tiendanube

The most valuable feature of Kubernetes is its support for load balancing.

Hitesh D

Senior Manager at pnb metlife

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Elastic Container Se...

Ranking in Container Management

9th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Containers as a Service (CaaS) (1st)

Kubernetes

Ranking in Container Management

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Elastic Container Service is 1.4%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kubernetes is 6.1%, up from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Container Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Kubernetes	6.1%
Amazon Elastic Container Service	1.4%
Other	92.5%

Container Management

Featured Reviews

Alexander Gomez

Lead Developer at Virtual Restaurant Solutions

Starts strong with functionalities but reveals cost limitations

The main challenge with Amazon Elastic Container Service is the significant learning curve. Everything mentioned took months to understand. It is not for the faint of heart. Though they have graphical interfaces and numerous dashboards that help create all the services graphically, learning to use Bash can be challenging. Because these are headless servers by nature, there is no graphical interface. It is not similar to Windows where you can hit the start button and look for your program, or Mac where you can look for programs on your desktop. Instead, users must understand this new paradigm of a Linux headless server, which requires using command-based prompts for builds and development.

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Migration to managed containers has accelerated microservice deployments and reduced downtime

Site Reliability Engineer at Tiendanube

I am using add-ons for EKS Kubernetes that stand out to me. The useful add-ons help with administrating multiple clusters and accounts in AWS. My company uses Kubernetes for microservices within the organization. I advise others to look into using Kubernetes and not to pursue other options. Kubernetes is something I want to emphasize before we wrap up. I have given this review an overall rating of 80.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

16%

Government

Performing Arts

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	28
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	18

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	26
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	47

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Elastic Container Service?

The product's pricing is good.

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?

I have had a good experience with pricing, but the setup costs are high.

What needs improvement with Kubernetes?

Kubernetes can be improved, though I cannot specify exactly how at this time.

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform vs Amazon Elastic Container Service

Comparisons

Compared 34% of the time

HashiCorp Nomad vs Amazon Elastic Container Service

Compared 15% of the time

Microsoft Azure Container Service vs Amazon Elastic Container Service

Compared 14% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Amazon Elastic Container Service

Compared 9% of the time

Google Container Engine vs Amazon Elastic Container Service

Compared 6% of the time

More Amazon Elastic Container Service Competitors

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Kubernetes

Compared 19% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) vs Kubernetes

Compared 12% of the time

Portainer vs Kubernetes

Compared 10% of the time

HashiCorp Nomad vs Kubernetes

Compared 7% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform vs Kubernetes

Compared 7% of the time

More Kubernetes Competitors

Product Reports

Amazon Elastic Container Service

January 2026

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Download Kubernetes product report

January 2026

Also Known As

Amazon ECS, Amazon EC2 Container Service

Overview

Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) is a highly scalable, high-performance container orchestration service that supports Docker containers and allows you to easily run and scale containerized applications on AWS. Amazon ECS eliminates the need for you to install and operate your own container orchestration software, manage and scale a cluster of virtual machines, or schedule containers on those virtual machines.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Kubernetes (K8s) is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.
It groups containers that make up an application into logical units for easy management and discovery. Kubernetes builds upon 15 years of experience of running production workloads at Google, combined with best-of-breed ideas and practices from the community.

Sample Customers

Ubisoft, GoPro, TIBCO, Remind

China unicom, NetEase Cloud, Nav, AppDirect