{
  "name": "Kubernetes",
  "slug": "kubernetes",
  "pricingModel": "free",
  "normalized": {
    "currency": "USD",
    "entry": {
      "plan": "AWS EKS",
      "perMonth": 0.1,
      "unit": "unknown",
      "unitNoun": null,
      "billing": "unknown",
      "free": false,
      "contactSales": false
    },
    "plans": [
      {
        "plan": "Open Source",
        "perMonth": 0,
        "unit": "unknown",
        "unitNoun": null,
        "billing": "unknown",
        "free": true,
        "contactSales": false
      },
      {
        "plan": "AWS EKS",
        "perMonth": 0.1,
        "unit": "unknown",
        "unitNoun": null,
        "billing": "unknown",
        "free": false,
        "contactSales": false
      },
      {
        "plan": "Google GKE",
        "perMonth": 0.1,
        "unit": "unknown",
        "unitNoun": null,
        "billing": "unknown",
        "free": false,
        "contactSales": false
      },
      {
        "plan": "Azure AKS",
        "perMonth": 0,
        "unit": "unknown",
        "unitNoun": null,
        "billing": "unknown",
        "free": true,
        "contactSales": false
      }
    ],
    "hasFreePlan": true,
    "hasFreeTrial": false,
    "contactSalesOnly": false
  },
  "pricingDetails": {
    "note": "Kubernetes is free open source. Total cost depends on infrastructure: managed service fees + compute nodes + storage + networking.",
    "tiers": [
      {
        "name": "Open Source",
        "price": "$0",
        "features": [
          "Container orchestration",
          "Automated rollouts/rollbacks",
          "Service discovery & load balancing",
          "Storage orchestration",
          "Self-healing",
          "Horizontal pod autoscaling",
          "CNCF graduated project",
          "MIT license"
        ],
        "priceNote": "Self-hosted. Infrastructure and engineering costs apply."
      },
      {
        "name": "AWS EKS",
        "price": "$0.10",
        "features": [
          "Managed control plane",
          "Auto-scaling node groups",
          "Fargate serverless pods",
          "EKS Anywhere (on-premises)",
          "Extended version support available"
        ],
        "priceNote": "per cluster per hour ($73/month). Compute nodes billed separately.",
        "billingPeriod": "hour"
      },
      {
        "name": "Google GKE",
        "price": "$0.10",
        "features": [
          "Managed control plane",
          "Autopilot mode (fully managed nodes)",
          "One free zonal cluster",
          "Multi-cluster mesh",
          "GKE Enterprise available"
        ],
        "priceNote": "per cluster per hour ($73/month). First zonal cluster free. Autopilot: $0.0445/vCPU/hr.",
        "billingPeriod": "hour"
      },
      {
        "name": "Azure AKS",
        "price": "$0",
        "features": [
          "Free control plane (Free tier)",
          "Standard tier at $0.10/cluster/hr",
          "Premium tier for mission-critical",
          "Azure Arc integration",
          "Virtual nodes with ACI"
        ],
        "priceNote": "Free tier: $0 control plane. Standard: $73/month. Compute billed separately.",
        "billingPeriod": "month"
      }
    ],
    "hasFreeTier": true,
    "hasFreeTrial": false
  },
  "costFacts": null,
  "pricesByRegion": null,
  "verdict": "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.",
  "bestFor": "Organizations running 10+ microservices that need automated scaling and orchestration | Teams with dedicated DevOps/platform engineering capacity | Companies with compliance requirements that mandate infrastructure control | Multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud deployments where portability matters | High-scale workloads where bin-packing efficiency saves more than management costs",
  "hiddenCosts": [
    "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."
  ],
  "recentChanges": [],
  "priceHistory": [],
  "partnerLink": false,
  "correction": "This price may be out of date. If the vendor's page differs, call report_issue with evidence_url and quote, or verify_price.",
  "provenance": {
    "lastVerifiedAt": "2026-09-29",
    "sourceUrl": "https://kubernetes.io",
    "confidence": "medium"
  },
  "source": "Toolradar",
  "citation": "Toolradar, verified 2026-09-29, https://toolradar.com/tools/kubernetes/pricing",
  "affiliateUrl": "https://toolradar.com/api/go/kubernetes?ref=mcp&key=json",
  "toolradarUrl": "https://toolradar.com/tools/kubernetes/pricing"
}