Kubernetes Cost Calculator
Estimate monthly Kubernetes cluster costs across cloud providers.
Monthly Cost Breakdown
Compute Cost
$91.01
nodes × hourly rate × 730h
Management Fee
$73.00
control plane fee
Storage Cost
$30.00
nodes × GB × $0.10/GB
Networking Estimate
$45.00
nodes × $15/mo base
Total Monthly Cost
AWS t3.medium
$239.01
Annual estimate: $2,868.12
Hidden Costs Not Included
NAT Gateway ($32-45/mo per AZ on AWS), Load Balancers ($18-25/mo each), Logging/monitoring (CloudWatch, Stackdriver), Inter-AZ data transfer ($0.01/GB), and IP addresses ($3.65/mo each on AWS). These can add 20-40% to your base compute cost.
Instance Comparison Across Providers
| Size | AWS | GCP | Azure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small (2 vCPU, 4 GB) | t3.medium | e2-medium | B2s |
| Medium (4 vCPU, 16 GB) | m5.xlarge | e2-standard-4 | D4s_v3 |
| Large (8 vCPU, 32 GB) | m5.2xlarge | e2-standard-8 | D8s_v3 |
| X-Large (16 vCPU, 64 GB) | m5.4xlarge | e2-standard-16 | D16s_v3 |
How to Use This Calculator
1
Pick your cloud
Select AWS, GCP, or Azure
2
Configure your cluster
Set nodes, size, and storage
3
Review total cost
Monthly estimate with breakdown
The True Cost of Kubernetes
The control plane fee is just the beginning. A production K8s cluster includes compute, storage, networking, load balancers, NAT gateways, and monitoring. A "minimal" 3-node cluster often costs $300-500/mo once you add production essentials. Right-sizing and spot instances can cut costs by 60%.
The Essentials
Management Fee
EKS/GKE: ~$73/mo. AKS: Free control plane
Right-Size Nodes
Larger nodes = better bin-packing efficiency
Spot/Preemptible
Save 60-90% on non-critical workloads
NAT Gateway Tax
AWS NAT Gateway: $32/mo + data charges per AZ
Multi-AZ Cost
3 AZs = 3x NAT, 3x node minimum
Reserved Instances
Commit 1-3 years for 30-60% savings
Frequently Asked Questions
Running Kubernetes in production?
Warden monitors your K8s services and endpoints with 30-second health checks.
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