# Amazon EKS

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/kubernetes/amazon-eks/

AWS's managed Kubernetes control plane, billed per cluster per hour with nodes charged separately as EC2 or Fargate.

## Who it suits

A cluster that has to sit inside AWS — IAM on the cluster, VPC networking, EC2 or Fargate nodes — with a 99.95% control-plane SLA measured in five-minute intervals rather than described in prose.

Consider something else if You run many small clusters. $0.10 an hour is about $73 a year each before a node exists, and it becomes $0.60 an hour the moment you fall behind on Kubernetes versions — DigitalOcean charges nothing for the control plane at all.

## iScore

73 / 100 (80% interval 65–81), rank 4 of 4 in kubernetes.

inetGeek's own reading, computed from sourced facts against category peers by disclosed rules. Not a provider claim. Intervals are 80%; a provider with few documented facts is pulled toward the category middle rather than scored on what little is known.
Method: https://inetgeek.com/iscore/. Full output with every criterion's basis: https://inetgeek.com/scores.json. Every kubernetes peer ranked: https://inetgeek.com/kubernetes/amazon-eks/alternatives/

- Price: 56 (34–78), weight 36%, 2 of 2 criteria scored
- Capabilities: 100 (94–100), weight 29%, 2 of 2 criteria scored
- Trust and compliance: 50 (44–56), weight 21%, 1 of 1 criteria scored
- Evidence: 94 (94–94), weight 14%, 4 of 4 criteria scored

## What the documentation says

### Pricing

- Free tier: No ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/eks/pricing/), read 2026-09-15)
- Entry paid plan: $0.10 per cluster per hour on standard Kubernetes version support — roughly $73 a year before any node runs. Extended version support, for clusters kept on an older Kubernetes release, is $0.60 per cluster per hour. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/eks/pricing/), read 2026-09-15)
- Pricing model: Per cluster per hour for the control plane, with the rate rising sixfold if you stay on an unsupported Kubernetes version. Nodes, EKS Auto Mode, add-on capabilities and hybrid nodes are each metered separately on top. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/eks/pricing/), read 2026-09-15)

### Deployment

- Containers: Supported ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/eks/pricing/), read 2026-09-15)

### Infrastructure

- Autoscaling: Supported ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/eks/pricing/), read 2026-09-15)
- Uptime SLA: 99.95% monthly for the Kubernetes endpoint of a Standard Control Plane cluster, measured in five-minute intervals. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/eks/sla/), read 2026-09-15)

## Compared with

- [Amazon EKS vs Google Kubernetes Engine](https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-eks-vs-google-gke/)
- [Amazon EKS vs Azure Kubernetes Service](https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-eks-vs-azure-aks/)
- [Amazon EKS vs DigitalOcean Kubernetes](https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-eks-vs-digitalocean-kubernetes/)