GKE vs EKS Cost Comparison (2025): Which One is Cheaper?

The “AWS vs Google Cloud” debate usually ends with “it depends.” But when it comes to managed Kubernetes, the pricing models are surprisingly different—and one specific feature often makes GKE significantly cheaper for small-to-medium clusters.

To help you run the numbers for your specific workload, we built a free tool:

👉 Try the GKE vs EKS Calculator

The $73/Month Elephant in the Room

The biggest difference between Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) isn’t the node price—it’s the Control Plane.

• AWS EKS: Charges $0.10 per hour (~$73/month) for every single cluster. No free tier.
• Google GKE: Gives you one Zonal cluster for free per billing account. Subsequent clusters charge the standard $0.10/hour.

This means for a startup running a single production cluster and a single staging cluster, the math starts to tilt:

1. AWS: 2 clusters × $73 = $146/month just to exist.
2. GCP: 1st cluster free + 2nd cluster paid = $73/month.

That’s an instant 50% savings on management fees.

Managed Nodes: The Hidden “System” Tax

Both clouds offer a “serverless” experience where they manage the underlying OS for you.

AWS Fargate

Fargate is true serverless. You don’t see the nodes; you just pay for vCPU/RAM.

• Pros: Zero patching, strong isolation.
• Cons: No DaemonSets, no privileged pods, and strict logging limitations.
• Cost: Generally 20% more expensive than EC2, but saves on ops time.

GKE Autopilot

Autopilot manages the nodes, but you can still see them.

• Pros: Supports DaemonSets (yay Datadog!), follows standard K8s behavior more closely.
• Cons: Enforces resource limits and security contexts.
• Cost: Charged per pod request. Often cheaper than Fargate for “bursty” workloads because of bin-packing efficiency.

Compute Costs: m5.large vs e2-standard-2

Let’s compare the workhorses.

• AWS: m5.large (2 vCPU, 8GB RAM) ≈ $0.096/hour
• GCP: e2-standard-2 (2 vCPU, 8GB RAM) ≈ $0.067/hour

Google’s E2 instances are cost-optimized shared-core machines that are perfect for general Kubernetes workloads. They are typically ~30% cheaper than AWS’s M5 generation.

However, AWS fights back with Graviton (ARM).

• AWS: m7g.large (2 vCPU, 8GB RAM) ≈ $0.076/hour
• Performance: Graviton often outperforms x86.
• Catch: You must recompile your container images for ARM64.

Using the Calculator

Our new calculator lets you input:

1. Number of clusters
2. Number of worker nodes per cluster
3. Expected running hours

It instantly visualizes the monthly bill for both clouds, highlighting the “Free Tier” savings on GCP.

When is EKS Cheaper?

EKS becomes competitive when:

• Spot Instances: AWS Spot capacity is deeper and often more reliable in major regions.
• Ecosystem: You heavily use other AWS services (RDS, S3, DynamoDB). The data transfer costs of crossing clouds (GKE -> AWS RDS) will wipe out any compute savings.
• Marketplace: You rely on AWS Marketplace add-ons or EDP (Enterprise Discount Program) commitments.

When is GKE Cheaper?

• Small Scale: < 5 clusters. The free control plane is a huge winner.
• Data Analytics: BigQuery integration is superior.
• Network Ingress: GCP’s global load balancers are often cheaper and more performant than creating multiple AWS ALBs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is GKE really free?

The Management of the first zonal cluster is free ($73/mo savings). You still pay for the worker nodes (EC2 equivalent) and Load Balancers.

Can I run GKE on AWS?

Yes, GKE Enterprise (Anthos) allows this, but it is very expensive. Stick to standard EKS if you are on AWS.

Which is easier for beginners?

GKE is widely considered more “batteries included.” The console is faster, and features like “Autopilot” work out of the box. EKS often requires more assembly (Terraform, Helm, IAM configurations).

Conclusion

If you are strictly optimizing for raw infrastructure bill—especially for < 5 clusters—GKE is the clear winner in 2025. The free control plane and cheaper E2 instances make it hard to beat.

However, “Cost” is more than your bill. It’s also your engineering time. If your team knows AWS, staying on EKS is likely cheaper than retraining everyone for GCP.

Stop guessing. Run your numbers now:

🚀 Launch GKE vs EKS Calculator