Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service vs KubeSphere
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service
aws.amazon.com
KubeSphere
kubesphere.ioSide by side
| Figure | Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service | KubeSphere |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $0.10/mo | $65/mo |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 6 | 8 |
| Spec score · Container Orchestration Software | 8.3 (#4) | 8.9 (#2) |
| Headquarters | Seattle, Washington, United States | Beijing, China |
| Kubernetes compatibility | EKS is Kubernetes-conformant and supports applications and community tools compatible with upstream Kubernetes. | KubeSphere v4.1.3 is tested with Kubernetes v1.21 through v1.30, while untested versions are not guaranteed compatible. |
| Purpose | Amazon EKS is a managed Kubernetes service for building, running, and scaling production-ready applications across environments. | KubeSphere is a Kubernetes-based distributed operating system for cloud-native application management with a plug-and-play architecture for third-party applications. |
| Support | AWS lists technical support for service-related technical issues and says it is unavailable under the Basic Support Plan. | KubeSphere Enterprise offers one-stop professional technical support services. |
Plans
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service
- Standard Kubernetes version support$0.10 a month
- Extended Kubernetes version support$0.60 a month
- Provisioned Control Plane XL$1.65 a month
- Provisioned Control Plane 2XL$3.40 a month
- Provisioned Control Plane 4XL$6.90 a month
- Provisioned Control Plane 8XL$13.90 a month
KubeSphere
- KubeSphere Backup FreeFree
- KubeSphere Community EditionFree
- KubeSphere Community EditionFree
- KubeSphere Backup Basic$65 a month
- KubeSphere Backup Standard$200 a month
- KubeSphere Backup Enterprise$340 a month
- KubeSphere Backup ExclusivePriced on request
- KubeSphere EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) is a managed Kubernetes service for building, running, and scaling production applications across cloud, on-premises, and edge environments. It manages Kubernetes control-plane availability across three AWS Availability Zones and replaces unhealthy control-plane nodes automatically. Applications can run on Amazon EC2 or AWS Fargate. EKS Auto Mode automates provisioning for compute, storage, and networking, along with scaling, operating-system patching, and add-on management. Hybrid deployments can use Hybrid Nodes, AWS Outposts, or EKS Anywhere. EKS remains compatible with upstream Kubernetes applications and tools, and integrates with IAM role-based access control, VPC pod networking, and Application Load Balancers. EKS Capabilities provides managed Argo CD for GitOps across clusters. There are no minimum fees or upfront commitments, but worker resources and related traffic are billed separately. Standard version support is $0.10 a month, billed per cluster hour.
KubeSphere
KubeSphere is a Kubernetes-based platform for managing cloud-native applications, with a plug-in architecture for third-party applications and open-source tools. Its Community Edition is an open-source container platform and costs nothing, with free-forever availability for a self-managed Kubernetes platform. The platform supports multi-tenancy and multi-cluster management, with monitoring, event and audit-log queries, tenant log collection, alerting and notifications. Delivery features include Jenkins-based CI/CD and automated Source-to-Image and Binary-to-Image workflows. KubeSphere supports online or offline installation, one-click upgrades and cluster scaling across infrastructure environments. Its REST API backend includes an API server and controller manager. Enterprise adds image security hardening, two-factor authentication, vulnerability fixes and permission controls at platform, cluster and application levels. Enterprise is available by on-demand subscription or private deployment, with extensions available by subscription; pricing is available from sales. Its lightweight architecture can run with 2 CPU cores and 4 GB of memory.