Exoscale Scalable Kubernetes Service vs Google Kubernetes Engine
Exoscale Scalable Kubernetes Service
exoscale.com
Google Kubernetes Engine
cloud.google.comSide by side
| Figure | Exoscale Scalable Kubernetes Service | Google Kubernetes Engine |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $0.10/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 3 |
| Spec score · Container Orchestration Software | 7.9 (#10) | 9.2 (#1) |
| Autoscaling | Karpenter can dynamically provision compute resources, and Pro Cluster includes this autoscaling feature. | GKE can automatically scale Pods and nodes, including node auto-provisioning in Standard mode and automatic node provisioning in Autopilot. |
| Founded | 2011 | 1998 |
| Headquarters | Lausanne, Switzerland | Mountain View, California, USA |
| Integrations | Exoscale lists Kubernetes Cloud Controller Manager, Karpenter, Terraform, Packer, Vault, Pulumi, and Crossplane among its integrations. | The product page names Config Sync, Cloud Service Mesh, Fleets, and AI Hypercomputer among GKE integrations or related services. |
| Intended users | Exoscale describes its cloud platform as built to help European teams develop cloud-native applications and specifically mentions developers and data engineers. | Google describes GKE as a foundation for platform builders and enterprise developer platforms, as well as for teams training and serving AI models. |
| Purpose | SKS is a managed Kubernetes service for deploying, scaling, and hosting containerized applications in Europe. | Google Kubernetes Engine is a managed environment for running containerized applications. |
| Security controls | Clusters are provisioned with minimal exposure by default, and users control authentication, network policies, and role-based access. | GKE supports IAM, Kubernetes RBAC, automated credential rotation, hardened Container-Optimized OS nodes, locked-down firewalls, and read-only filesystems where possible. |
Plans
Exoscale Scalable Kubernetes Service
- Starter ClusterFree
- Pro ClusterPrice not published
Google Kubernetes Engine
- Free tierFree
- Free tierFree
- Cluster management fee$0.10 a month
In their own words
Exoscale Scalable Kubernetes Service
Exoscale Scalable Kubernetes Service (SKS) is a managed Kubernetes service for deploying, scaling and hosting containerized applications in Europe. It is available through web and APIs, with a free Starter Cluster and a Pro Cluster billed hourly; the Pro price is not shown as a numeric amount. Exoscale operates the control plane and provides upgrades, and says fully managed clusters can start in less than one minute. Starter includes a managed control plane, CLI, API, Terraform integration and automatic control-plane patch upgrades. Pro adds a highly available control plane, etcd backups, a 99.95% SLA and Karpenter autoscaling. Network Load Balancers handle ingress, while the CSI driver attaches block or object storage for stateful workloads. Authentication, network policies, role-based access and Kubernetes Audit provide control and visibility. Every release passes CNCF conformance tests. SKS is vanilla Kubernetes, so monitoring, GitOps and security tools are not installed by default. Customers receive ticket support, with paid plans offering faster responses and additional coverage.
Google Kubernetes Engine
Google Kubernetes Engine is a managed environment for running containerized applications. It manages the Kubernetes control-plane life cycle for each cluster, from creation to deletion. Teams using Autopilot can hand node provisioning, scaling, scheduling and infrastructure management to Google, while users who prefer can manage nodes themselves. Autopilot also includes automatic capacity right-sizing and per-pod pricing. GKE supports GPU and TPU workloads and connects with AI Hypercomputer for machine-learning and high-performance computing. The product page states that clusters can reach 65,000 nodes. Security features include visibility into configuration issues and risks, agentless scanning for critical vulnerabilities, workload isolation through GKE Sandbox and hardware-based encryption for data in use with Confidential GKE Nodes. Fleets and Teams help organize clusters and workloads across teams. It also supports conformant attached Kubernetes clusters and says applications can run unmodified on on-premises hardware or in public cloud. Windows Server node images and containers are unavailable in Autopilot. A free tier and trial are listed, with a $9/mo starting price.