AWS Elastic Load Balancing vs kube-vip
AWS Elastic Load Balancing
aws.amazon.com
kube-vip
kube-vip.ioSide by side
| Figure | AWS Elastic Load Balancing | kube-vip |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 0 |
| Spec score · Load Balancing Software | 9.0 (#1) | 6.9 (#15) |
| Integrations | Documented integrations include EC2, EC2 Auto Scaling, ACM, CloudWatch, ECS, Global Accelerator, Route 53 and AWS WAF. | The documentation describes a kube-vip cloud provider for assigning IP addresses to Kubernetes LoadBalancer Services and lists vendor API integrations. |
| Purpose | Elastic Load Balancing automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets and virtual appliances in one or more Availability Zones. | kube-vip provides a virtual IP and load balancer for Kubernetes control planes and Services of type LoadBalancer. |
Plans
AWS Elastic Load Balancing
- AWS Free TierFree
- Pay-as-you-go — Application Load BalancerPrice not published
- Pay-as-you-go — Classic Load BalancerPrice not published
- Pay-as-you-go — Gateway Load BalancerPrice not published
- Pay-as-you-go — Network Load BalancerPrice not published
In their own words
AWS Elastic Load Balancing
AWS Elastic Load Balancing distributes incoming application traffic across targets and virtual appliances in one or more Availability Zones. It offers Application, Network, Gateway, and Classic Load Balancers, scales request handling with traffic, and runs configurable health checks on targets. Application Load Balancers support HTTP header-based routing, redirects, fixed responses, HTTP/2, and gRPC. Network Load Balancers support static Elastic IP addresses and AWS PrivateLink for TCP and TLS listeners. The service also supports SSL/TLS termination, certificate management, and client certificate authentication. CloudWatch metrics and logging are available for all four types. A single load balancer can distribute traffic across AWS and on-premises resources. Kubernetes support includes direct-to-pod routing for Application Load Balancers and private EKS clusters for Application and Network Load Balancers. AWS recommends different types for HTTP, transport protocols, third-party virtual appliances, and EC2-Classic applications. Usage charges vary by region; data transfer and public IPv4 address charges may be additional. New AWS customers receive a free tier for six months after account creation, with usage limits and up to $200 in credits.
kube-vip
kube-vip is free, open-source software that gives Kubernetes clusters a virtual IP and load balancing for control-plane traffic and LoadBalancer Services. It targets Linux, self-hosted deployments such as bare metal, on-premises systems, virtualization, and edge devices including ARM hardware and Raspberry Pi. Virtual IPs may be IPv4, IPv6, or DNS names. Networking modes are ARP, BGP, routing tables, and WireGuard; the documented modes are disjunctive, so only one can be enabled at a time. kube-vip can run as a static Pod or DaemonSet inside the cluster it serves. Control-plane options include leader election, kubeadm static Pods, and K3s or other distribution DaemonSets. Service support includes BGP across nodes, address pools, CIDR or ranges, DHCP, and UPnP. It uses Apache-2.0 licensing and provides Layer 4 routing, not Layer 7 routing.