ECS vs EKS: what the platform itself costs
Both run containers on your EC2 instances. Only one charges for the control plane.
Platform fees in us-east-1
What each platform charges for itself, before any instance runs.
| Platform | Fee | Unit | Charged for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon ECS on your own EC2no cluster fee at all | $0.00 | no fee | the instances only |
| ECS Managed Instancesc6i.large management fee | $0.0102 | per node-hour | each node AWS runs for you |
| Amazon EKS clusterthe control plane | $0.10 | per cluster-hour | each cluster, however many nodes |
| EKS Auto Modec6i.large management fee | $0.0102 | per node-hour | each node AWS runs for you |
| ECS Anywherehardware you already own | $0.01025 | per instance-hour | each external instance |
The ECS and EKS node fees are published per instance type; the one quoted here is for the c6i.large the rest of the table uses.
Monthly platform fee by cluster size
A cluster of c6i.large nodes, at $62.05 a node.
| Option | 1 node | 10 nodes | 100 nodes | At 10 nodes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon ECSon nodes you run | $0.00Lowest | $0.00Lowest | $0.00Lowest | nothing on top of EC2 |
| ECS Managed Instances | $7.45 | $74.46 | $744.60 | 12%of the node bill |
| Amazon EKSKubernetes on the same nodes | $73.00 | $73.00 | $73.00 | 12%of the node bill |
| EKS Auto Modethe node fee plus the cluster fee | $80.45 | $147.46 | $817.60 | 24%of the node bill |
EKS Auto Mode shows its node fee plus the cluster fee, because a cluster running it still pays for the control plane. The last column is the fee as a share of the node bill.
Which one to pick
Each recommendation links to the page for that option.
What to watch for
Gaps and gotchas that the price table does not show.
The cluster fee does not care how big the cluster is
EKS charges the same $73.00 a month for a one-node cluster and a thousand-node one. At 10 nodes of this size the fee is 12% of compute; at one node it is a large share of a small bill, which is the case where it matters.
Both node fees are a share of the same node price
ECS Managed Instances at $0.0102 an hour and EKS Auto Mode at $0.0102 an hour for c6i.large are priced as a percentage of that instance's Linux on-demand rate, which is why they land within a fraction of a cent of each other. The fee is published per instance type, so a bigger node carries a bigger fee.
EKS extended support is a separate charge
Running a Kubernetes version past the end of standard support adds a per-cluster hourly fee on top of the cluster fee. It is a real line item and it is not in the table above.
None of these fees has a Savings Plan rate
Compute Savings Plans discount the EC2 instances and Fargate tasks running under either platform. The EKS cluster fee, the EKS Auto Mode fee, the ECS Managed Instances fee and the ECS Anywhere fee are each published at one price, with no term or commitment discount.