AWS Controllers for Kubernetes vs Firefly
AWS Controllers for Kubernetes
aws-controllers-k8s.github.io
Firefly
firefly.aiSide by side
| Figure | AWS Controllers for Kubernetes | Firefly |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $2,499/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 3 |
| Spec score · Infrastructure as Code Tools | 7.9 (#8) | 8.1 (#5) |
| Founded | 2006 | 2021 |
| Intended users | The documentation recommends EKS Capabilities for EKS users seeking a managed experience and self-managed installation for users needing version and configuration control or running other Kubernetes environments. | Firefly describes its target users as enterprise cloud teams, including CIO and IT leadership, CloudOps and platform engineering, and security and governance teams. |
| Purpose | ACK lets users define and manage AWS resources directly from Kubernetes using Kubernetes custom resources. | Firefly automates cloud infrastructure with Infrastructure-as-Code and helps teams govern cloud environments and recover from outages and cyberattacks. |
Plans
AWS Controllers for Kubernetes
- Self-managed ACKFree
- ACK EKS CapabilityPriced on request
In their own words
AWS Controllers for Kubernetes
AWS Controllers for Kubernetes (ACK) lets Kubernetes users define AWS resources with Kubernetes custom resources. It periodically compares desired and actual AWS state and corrects drift. Documentation lists 74 service controllers, including S3, RDS, Lambda and DynamoDB. ACK supports declarative, version-controlled infrastructure alongside applications, across AWS accounts and regions. Read-only resources and read-only adoption support migration from other infrastructure-as-code tools. EKS users can install managed EKS Capabilities, where AWS handles controller installation and upgrades with automatic updates, auto-scaling and auto-tuning. Self-managed Helm installation runs on EKS, GKE, AKS, on-premises clusters and local environments, providing version and configuration control. AWS IAM authorizes controller access. Self-managed ACK costs nothing for Helm installation on Kubernetes 1.20+ on any Kubernetes cluster. EKS Capability pricing is hourly, with a base rate per enabled capability plus usage charges for each ACK resource managed.
Firefly
Firefly automates cloud infrastructure with Infrastructure-as-Code and helps teams govern environments and recover from outages or cyberattacks. Its tooling provides IaC orchestration, GitOps guardrails, self-service provisioning, and automated IaC generation. Firefly scans cloud environments to build an inventory and identify unmanaged resources, drift, and misconfigurations. Immutable IaC snapshots can rebuild complete environments in a clean region or account, or roll them back to a pre-breach or last-known-good state. Integrations include AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Kubernetes, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Slack, Microsoft Teams, PagerDuty, Jira, and ServiceNow. Its MCP Server connects with compatible tools such as Cursor and Claude for natural-language discovery and codification. Firefly says it scans metadata and configurations without accessing workload data such as S3 contents or VM file systems. It states that it is SOC 2 Type II certified and offers more than 600 built-in policies. The 14-day trial has full feature access; Essential starts at $2,499 per month billed annually.