Kubernetes Cost Calculator: EKS vs GKE vs AKS (2026)

Compare monthly Kubernetes cluster costs across AWS EKS, Google GKE, and Azure AKS.

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

How Much Does Kubernetes Cost in 2026?

A production Kubernetes cluster typically runs $150–$500/month for a minimal 3-node setup, scaling to $5,000+/month for larger production workloads. The total breaks into 5 components:

  • Control plane — EKS: $0.10/hr (~$73/mo), GKE Standard: $0.10/hr, AKS: free, GKE Autopilot: no cluster fee but higher pod pricing
  • Worker nodes (compute) — usually the largest line item. A 3-node m5.large cluster on AWS = ~$210/mo on-demand
  • Storage (EBS / PD / Azure Disks) — $10–50/mo for typical workloads
  • Networking — load balancers, NAT gateways, data egress. Often the surprise: NAT Gateway alone is ~$32/mo per gateway + per-GB charges
  • Add-ons — logging, monitoring, ingress controllers. $20–200/mo depending on stack

EKS vs GKE vs AKS: Quick Decision

AKS wins on free control plane — Azure doesn't charge the $73/mo cluster fee. GKE Autopilot wins on simplicity — Google manages nodes and you pay per pod resource. EKS wins on enterprise adoption and integrations — most teams already on AWS pick it. For a deeper EKS-specific breakdown including EC2 vs Fargate, see the EKS Pricing Calculator.

How to Cut Kubernetes Costs by 30–60%

Most clusters are over-provisioned by 50%+. Five high-ROI levers, in order of typical impact:

  1. Right-size pod CPU and memory requests based on actual usage (P95) rather than guess. See the Container Size Calculator for starting points by runtime.
  2. Use Spot / Preemptible instances for stateless workloads — typically 60–90% off on-demand pricing
  3. Add VPC endpoints for S3 and ECR on AWS to skip NAT Gateway per-GB charges
  4. Enable Cluster Autoscaler to drain and remove idle nodes automatically
  5. Consolidate to fewer, larger clusters when org structure allows — better bin-packing, fewer control-plane fees

What This Calculator Includes (and What It Doesn't)

This estimate covers control-plane fees, on-demand compute for your selected node count and instance type, and EBS-equivalent storage. It does not include data egress, third-party SaaS add-ons (e.g. Datadog), or development tooling. For production planning, add 15–25% buffer for the items above and another 10% for typical waste before optimization.

Related Tools

EKS Pricing Calculator

Estimate AWS EKS cluster costs with EC2 or Fargate

NAT Gateway Cost Calculator

Calculate AWS NAT Gateway costs per hour and per GB

Container Size Calculator

Right-size CPU and memory for containers

Kubernetes costs out of control?

Recon breaks down costs by namespace, detects idle resources, and recommends right-sizing — across EKS, GKE, and AKS. Stop guessing, start optimizing.

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