Kubernetes hosting cost in 2026: EKS, GKE, AKS compared
March 28, 2026
Aron Wagner
CEO & Co-Founder
A production Kubernetes cluster with five 4 vCPU, 8 GB nodes, three load balancers and 1 TB a month of traffic to users costs about $994 a month on AWS EKS, $987 on Azure AKS, $763 on Google GKE and $706 on American Cloud. That includes the support plan you need to reach an engineer, at list prices on October 18, 2026.
The control plane fee is the one cost everyone compares. It's also the least important number on the bill. Ours is $191 a month for a three-node HA control plane against $73 on the hyperscalers, and our cluster still comes out cheapest, because nodes, load balancers, traffic to your users and the support plan you need before an engineer will answer decide the total.
What does a 5-node Kubernetes cluster cost?
The cluster: five worker nodes with 4 vCPU, 8 GB of RAM and a 200 GB SSD each, a control plane on each provider's production tier, three services exposed through load balancers, and the cheapest support plan that lets you open a technical case with an engineer. Prices are on-demand, Linux, in a US region (AWS us-east-1, Google Cloud us-central1, Azure East US), for a 730-hour month.
| Cost line | American Cloud | AWS EKS | Google GKE | Azure AKS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Control plane | $191.32 (3 control nodes) | $73.00 | $73.00 | $73.00 |
| 5 worker nodes with storage | $478.30 | $700.50 | $524.01 | $712.85 |
| Load balancers | $36.00 (3) | $49.28 (3) | $18.25 (3 rules) | $18.25 (3 rules) |
| 1 TB to users | $0 | $89.00 | $119.09 | $83.30 |
| Support from an engineer | $0 | $82.06 | $29.00 | $100.00 |
| Monthly total | $705.62 | $993.83 | $763.35 | $987.40 |
The hyperscaler control plane in that table is EKS on standard support, a GKE regional cluster and the AKS Standard tier, which is a tier with an uptime SLA. On American Cloud the first control node is free, and a highly available control plane runs three, so you pay for two.
The traffic line is the transfer charge plus what each load balancer charges for the data it handles. Here's the same cluster at three traffic levels:
| Sent to users a month | American Cloud | AWS EKS | Google GKE | Azure AKS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nothing | $705.62 | $896.82 | $644.26 | $904.10 |
| 1 TB | $705.62 | $993.83 | $763.35 | $987.40 |
| 5 TB | $705.62 | $1,421.11 | $1,210.10 | $1,355.40 |
Our total doesn't move, because we don't charge for egress. Against GKE, we're cheaper once you send more than about 500 GB a month to users, and against EKS and AKS before a single byte leaves the cluster.
How much is the control plane on EKS, GKE and AKS?
The control plane runs the API server, scheduler, etcd and controller manager. Each provider prices it differently:
| Provider | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| AWS EKS | $0.10 an hour ($73 a month) | $0.60 an hour once a cluster runs a version on extended support |
| Google GKE | $0.10 an hour ($73 a month) for every cluster | A $74.40 monthly credit per billing account covers one zonal or Autopilot cluster, but not a regional one |
| Azure AKS | Standard $0.10 an hour ($73 a month); Premium $0.60 an hour ($438) | Azure says its Free tier, which has no SLA, is "not meant to run at scale (>10 nodes)" |
| American Cloud | First control node free | Each extra control node costs the same as a worker node |
For a development cluster, Google's credit and our free first control node take this line to $0, while EKS charges $73 for every cluster.
What do Kubernetes worker nodes cost?
Workers run your containers, and they're the biggest fixed line on the bill. Here are the same four node shapes on each provider, with matching SSD storage in the price:
| Node (vCPU / RAM / SSD) | American Cloud | AWS EKS | Google GKE | Azure AKS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 / 4 GB / 150 GB | $51.06 (Small) | $74.05 (c6i.large) | $57.40 (E2 custom) | $80.96 (F2s v2) |
| 4 / 8 GB / 200 GB | $95.66 (Scale) | $140.10 (c6i.xlarge) | $104.80 (E2 custom) | $142.57 (F4s v2) |
| 8 / 16 GB / 250 GB | $181.63 (Enterprise) | $268.20 (c6i.2xlarge) | $194.60 (E2 custom) | $265.94 (F8s v2) |
| 8 / 32 GB / 500 GB | $280.52 (Enterprise Plus) | $320.32 (m6i.2xlarge) | $245.67 (e2-standard-8) | $318.72 (D8s v5) |
Hyperscaler prices are the on-demand list price for AWS EC2, Google Compute Engine and Azure instances plus the base disk: AWS gp3 at $0.08 per GB, Google's balanced disk at $0.10 per GB, and Azure's Standard SSD at the next size up (256 or 512 GB). Our node includes the SSD.
We picked types that run at full speed all the time. AWS's t3 family runs at a baseline CPU level and bursts above it, which suits a quiet dev cluster better than production nodes. The c6i nodes are Intel, like our Standard nodes.
The hyperscalers cut node prices if you commit to one or three years, through savings plans and committed use discounts. Those discounts don't touch transfer or support. Our Kubernetes nodes are billed by the hour, with no term to sign.
Which Kubernetes costs grow with your traffic?
Traffic to your users
This is the line that grows with your success. AWS charges $0.09 per GB after the first 100 GB a month, Google Cloud $0.12 per GiB for the first TiB from us-central1 and $0.11 after that, and Azure $0.087 per GB, also past the first 100 GB. Sending 5 TB a month costs $441 on AWS, about $522 on Google Cloud and $426 on Azure, before the load balancer's share. On American Cloud there are no egress fees on Kubernetes, compute or storage.
Load balancers
Each Kubernetes LoadBalancer service gets a cloud load balancer, and Helm charts often create one per service. An AWS Application Load Balancer, the kind an EKS ingress creates, is $0.0225 an hour ($16.43 a month) plus $0.008 per capacity unit-hour, which rises with traffic. Google charges $0.025 an hour for the first five forwarding rules plus $0.008 per GiB processed. Azure's Standard Load Balancer is $0.025 an hour for the first five rules plus $0.005 per GB processed. Ours are $12 a month each, with nothing metered on the traffic through them.
Logs
You can't run production Kubernetes without logs and metrics, and the hosted options charge by volume. CloudWatch Logs is $0.50 per GB ingested, and Container Insights for EKS adds $0.21 per million observations. Google Cloud Logging is $0.50 per GiB after the first 50 GiB per project each month. Azure Log Analytics is $2.30 per GB after the first 5 GB. At 50 GB of logs a month, that's $25 on AWS, $0 on Google Cloud and about $104 on Azure. Running Prometheus, Grafana and Loki inside the cluster swaps the per-GB bill for some node capacity on any provider.
What does it cost to reach an engineer?
On the hyperscalers, a person who'll look at your broken cluster comes with a paid plan:
- AWS: Basic Support comes with every account and covers customer service, documentation, re:Post and Trusted Advisor's core checks, but not technical help. That starts with Business Support+, which AWS calls its minimum recommended plan for production: $29 a month or 9% of the account's monthly AWS charges up to $10,000, whichever is greater. On the cluster above, that's $82 a month.
- Google Cloud: Standard Support is $29 a month or 3% of monthly charges, whichever is greater, with a first response within 4 hours for P2 cases.
- Azure: the Standard plan is $100 a month for 24x7 technical support by email, phone and chat. The $29 Developer plan answers through Microsoft Q&A instead.
On American Cloud, chat in the console and support tickets come with every account, and there's no plan to buy. Our median support response time is under 2 minutes. That's the line we'd point you at before any price in this post, because the night a node pool won't come back is when the bill stops mattering.
Is a managed Kubernetes service worth the monthly cost?
For most teams, yes. A managed control plane means the provider runs etcd, the API server and the scheduler, and keeps them patched. Kubernetes keeps release branches for only the three most recent minor versions, each with about a year of patches, so a self-run cluster needs a planned upgrade at least once a year, plus etcd backups and someone on call when the API server stops answering.
That service is the control plane line in the first table. Running the control plane yourself pays off when a platform team already runs many clusters. For everyone else, let the provider run it.
What does Kubernetes cost on American Cloud?
American Cloud's managed Kubernetes bills each node by the hour, from $0.0514 an hour for a Basic node (2 vCPU, 2 GB, 100 GB SSD) to $0.3843 for Enterprise Plus (8 vCPU, 32 GB, 500 GB SSD) on Standard (Intel) hosts, in our US data centers.
To price your own cluster, set the node size and count in the pricing calculator, or follow the getting started guide to create one.