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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
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (14th)
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 May 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Amazon EKS is 13.0%, down from 13.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kubernetes is 5.1%, down from 9.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Rock Wang - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing complex environments effortlessly while focusing on growth
The most beneficial aspect of Amazon EKS is that it helps manage the Kubernetes master node, so I don't need to maintain the master node, including tasks like upgrading. This allows me to focus on business code. If using services like Fargate, I only need to maintain my workload, simply uploading code that will be deployed to the Kubernetes cluster. This is especially beneficial for startup companies that lack the technical resources to manage the Kubernetes cluster. Furthermore, Amazon EKS allows me to utilize Kubernetes cluster-level expansion. If there’s insufficient resource on a machine, the cluster can automatically expand to add new nodes.
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 has very good basic features."
"It is a scalable solution."
"I would rate the stability of Amazon EKS ten out of ten, indicating it is highly stable."
"The solution's performance is good."
"The most beneficial aspect of Amazon EKS is that it helps manage the Kubernetes master node, so I don't need to maintain the master node, including tasks like upgrading."
"The most valuable feature is the cluster engine."
"What I found most valuable in Amazon EKS is its maturity as a cloud computing technology."
"The most important aspect of Amazon EKS is that it is easy to set up and very easy to upgrade."
"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"
"This solution provides a comprehensive way to scale up our ports and containers, without having to use multiple products."
"I like that it has really boosted cloud-native development and stood the test of time. The underlying architecture allows one to scale as per the business KPIs much faster."
"Kubernetes has everything. Its design structure is quite advanced, and its offerings are extensive. The practical feature was the seamless failover."
"There's a lot of community support if you need to get help."
"Kubernetes is a leading container orchestration solution, known for its simplicity and ease of use. Being open-source, it benefits from large community support, including enterprise support. Many companies offer their own version of Kubernetes, making it widely adopted and supported in the industry."
"The Desired State Configuration is a handy feature; we can deploy a certain number of pods, and the tool will ensure that the state is maintained in our desired configuration."
"This product has a rich toolset from the community including CNI plug-ins, Helm packages, operators, dashboards, various integrations, etc."
 

Cons

"They need to work on the Amazon plugins on the Kubernetes cluster."
"I would like to see the user interface improved because it is hard to find and not straightforward."
"I'd like improved traffic handling and additional application details within the system."
"I encountered problems with the product’s documentation."
"I'd like to see the solution add a service catalog."
"Amazon EKS should improve its integration."
"They should include some essential configuration features to it."
"My first experience with Amazon EKS was difficult, and I would rate the initial setup as two because it was challenging without prior experience in microservices."
"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."
"We would like to see more validation tools added to this solution, this would provide pre-deployment analysis that developers could use before publishing their infrastructure."
"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."
"Kubernetes could improve security. The security is really hard to deploy with proxies and other elements. Additionally, We have had some issues downloading repos and libraries."
"Absence of a built-in feature for local API creation"
"The network policies and RBAC management across multi-clusters could be improved. This is an issue we're trying to solve in the market."
"Kubernetes should improve its consistency across different types of deployments. My customers tell me that they get much better performance when Kubernetes is deployed on VM versus PaaS services from Azure."
"The setup and operation of the product should be simplified."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is fair enough and a little less costly."
"I rate Amazon EKS’s pricing a nine out of ten."
"I would like a cheaper version of it."
"The solution is quite costly and developers will start exploring other solutions or moving their workloads to other clouds if costs aren't reduced."
"The solution is more expensive than other competitors and does not require a license."
"Amazon EKS is very cost-effective."
"The tool's pricing is good."
"Pricing is dependent upon instance type."
"Kubernetes is free; it's open-source software."
"Kubernetes is an open-source solution that can be free. We have some distribution with licenses, such OpenShift and Tucows in Amazon. They are billing services."
"If you're using a public cloud, the cost depends on the number of nodes you are planning to deploy Kubernetes on."
"I am using the solution's open-source version."
"The solution is open source and has no fees."
"In addition to Kubernetes, you have to pay for support."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 pricing structure is beneficial for large companies who pay for what they use, but it is not affordable for startups. Offering a free version could help small companies.
What needs improvement with Amazon EKS?
There is room for improvement in making Amazon EKS ( /products/amazon-eks-reviews ) less error-prone when writing on the YAML file. A UI could help generate config files, simplifying the process fo...
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: April 2025.
850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.