Kubernetes Pricing 2026
Plans, hidden costs, and alternatives compared
Prices last confirmed on Sep 29, 2026 on kubernetes.io. Same data as Markdown or JSON.
Cite this data: Toolradar, Kubernetes pricing verified Sep 2026, toolradar.com/tools/kubernetes/pricing
Kubernetes starts at $0.10/month on the AWS EKS plan.
Verified Sep 2026 from the official pricing page.
Is Kubernetes worth the price?
Kubernetes itself is free and open source, but nobody runs Kubernetes for free.
The real cost is the infrastructure and expertise required to operate it. Managed services eliminate operational overhead but add control plane fees: AWS EKS at $0.10/cluster/hour ($73/month), Google GKE Standard at $0.10/cluster/hour ($73/month, one free zonal cluster), and Azure AKS Free tier ($0 for control plane).
On top of control plane fees, you pay for compute (EC2, GCE, Azure VMs), storage, networking, and load balancers, typically 70-80% of your total Kubernetes bill. At scale, Kubernetes saves money through bin-packing efficiency, but the break-even point is typically 10+ microservices.
For smaller deployments, platforms like Railway, Render, or Fly.io are dramatically simpler and cheaper.
Pricing Plans
Open Source
Free
- Container orchestration
- Automated rollouts/rollbacks
- Service discovery & load balancing
- Storage orchestration
- Self-healing
- Horizontal pod autoscaling
- CNCF graduated project
- MIT license
AWS EKS
$0.10/hour
- Managed control plane
- Auto-scaling node groups
- Fargate serverless pods
- EKS Anywhere (on-premises)
- Extended version support available
Google GKE
$0.10/hour
- Managed control plane
- Autopilot mode (fully managed nodes)
- One free zonal cluster
- Multi-cluster mesh
- GKE Enterprise available
Azure AKS
Free
- Free control plane (Free tier)
- Standard tier at $0.10/cluster/hr
- Premium tier for mission-critical
- Azure Arc integration
- Virtual nodes with ACI
Hidden Costs & Gotchas
EKS control plane
$0.10/cluster/hour = $73/month per cluster.
Load balancers
Each Kubernetes Service of type LoadBalancer creates a cloud load balancer.
Persistent storage
EBS/EFS/GCE PD charges for every PersistentVolume.
GKE Autopilot pricing (vCPU $0.0445/hr, memory $0.0049/GB/hr) eliminates node management but costs 20-30% more than standard GKE for steady workloads.
How Kubernetes compares
6 of 6 direct competitors offer a free plan.
Kubernetes Pricing FAQ
How much does Kubernetes cost?
Kubernetes starts at $0.10/month on the AWS EKS plan. It offers 2 paid tiers ranging from $0.10/month to $0.10/month. A free plan is also available.
Does Kubernetes have a free plan?
Yes. Kubernetes offers a free plan called "Open Source". It includes: Container orchestration, Automated rollouts/rollbacks, Service discovery & load balancing.
What is the cheapest Kubernetes paid plan?
The cheapest paid plan for Kubernetes is "AWS EKS" at $0.10/month. Key features include: Managed control plane, Auto-scaling node groups, Fargate serverless pods.
What are alternatives to Kubernetes?
Alternatives to Kubernetes include Docker, OpenShift, Nomad, Rancher. Verdaccio is fully free. Docker starts at $9/month, billing unit not specified.
Kubernetes alternatives
Direct competitors. Starting prices match the table above.
Sources
- Official Kubernetes pricing: kubernetes.io (verified Sep 2026)
- Cite this data: Toolradar, Kubernetes pricing verified Sep 2026, toolradar.com/tools/kubernetes/pricing
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