Guides · Kubernetes · Comparison
EKS vs GKE vs AKS for a 10-Person Team
· 3 min read
For a 10-person engineering team, the managed-Kubernetes decision is less about feature checklists and more about two numbers: what it costs per month and how many engineer-hours it eats. Short version: GKE is the least operational work, EKS is the safest bet if you’re already on AWS, AKS makes sense mainly if you’re committed to Azure — and a team this size should first ask whether it needs Kubernetes at all.
What does managed Kubernetes actually cost per month?
The control-plane fee is trivial; the real bill is nodes plus the ecosystem around them. Typical starting point for a small production setup (3–5 nodes, load balancer, logging, NAT):
| EKS (AWS) | GKE (Google Cloud) | AKS (Azure) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Control plane | ~$73/mo per cluster | ~$73/mo (Standard; free tier credit covers one zonal cluster) | Free (Standard tier ~$73/mo for SLA) |
| Typical small prod (nodes, LB, NAT, logs) | $400–900/mo | $350–800/mo | $350–800/mo |
| Autopilot-style option | Fargate (per-pod) | Autopilot (per-pod, mature) | Virtual nodes (limited) |
| Free credits for startups | Up to $100K (Activate) | Up to $200K+ (Google for Startups) | Up to $150K (Founders Hub) |
Cloud startup credits change this math completely for the first 1–2 years — often the deciding factor, and worth auditing before you commit.
Which one is the least work to operate?
GKE, and it isn’t close. Auto-upgrades, auto-repair, and Autopilot mode (you manage zero nodes) make GKE the closest thing to “Kubernetes without a platform team.” EKS is the most powerful but ships with the most assembly required — you own upgrades, add-ons (CNI, CoreDNS, metrics), and IAM wiring, though tools like Karpenter make node management excellent once set up. AKS sits between: better defaults than EKS, less polish than GKE, and historically the most upgrade friction of the three.
Should you just pick the cloud you’re already on?
Usually, yes. Cross-cloud “best Kubernetes” shopping rarely pays for a 10-person team: your data, IAM, billing credits, and team knowledge already live somewhere, and egress fees plus a second cloud’s learning curve eat any managed-K8s advantage. The realistic decision is “EKS because we’re on AWS,” not “GKE because it’s nicer.” If you’re greenfield with no cloud yet and Kubernetes is certain, GKE’s operational simplicity is a real argument for Google Cloud.
Does a 10-person team need Kubernetes at all?
Honest answer: often not yet. If you run a handful of services with predictable traffic, ECS/Fargate, Cloud Run, or even a well-run fly.io/Render setup delivers 80% of the value with 20% of the operational surface. Kubernetes earns its complexity when you have many services, bursty scaling, ML workloads, or platform requirements (multi-tenant, compliance isolation). Adopting it early isn’t fatal — but adopting it without anyone owning it is how small teams end up with a cluster nobody dares upgrade.
What does a sane small-team setup look like?
Whichever engine you pick: infrastructure as Terraform in your repos, one production and one staging cluster (not five), managed node groups or Autopilot, alerts that page on symptoms users feel, and upgrades on a quarterly calendar — boring, in the good way. That’s the shape we build in the Cloud Launch Package and keep healthy on the fractional retainer, on whichever of the three clouds you already call home.
Prices are typical ranges as of August 2026 — your bill depends on region, instance mix, and credits. Want the numbers for your actual setup? The audit is guaranteed.