Amazon EKS vs Cloudflare (2026): Pricing, Features & Verdict
Cloudflare is our pick, scoring 7.6/10 against 7.5/10 for Amazon EKS on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria. Its biggest advantage: higher Cost score (9/10 vs 4/10). For 10 users, Cloudflare is free, against $73/mo for Amazon EKS; only Cloudflare has a free plan.
Last updated: November 2026
Amazon EKS
7.5/10
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service is AWS's managed Kubernetes service. It runs the cluster control plane for teams that deploy containers on EC2, Fargate, or their own hardware.
Cloudflare
7.6/10
Cloudflare is a global edge network. It offers CDN, DNS, DDoS protection and a WAF, plus serverless compute and storage (Workers, R2, D1) for developers and businesses.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | A Amazon EKS | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 7.5/10 | 7.6/10 |
| Integration | 9/10 | 8/10 |
| Support | 6/10 | 4/10 |
| Cost | 4/10 | 9/10 |
| Customization | 9/10 | 8/10 |
| Security | 9/10 | 9/10 |
| Reliability | 9/10 | 7/10 |
| Ease of Use | 4/10 | 7/10 |
| Analytics | 7/10 | 7/10 |
| Scalability | 10/10 | 9/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Cheapest paid plan | $73/mo Standard support cluster | $5/mo Workers Paid |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | $73/mo Standard support cluster | Free Free |
| Features | ||
| Uptime SLA | ||
| API and CLI | Not listed | |
| Cloud Compute | Not listed | |
| Content Delivery Network | Not listed | |
| DDoS Protection | Not listed | |
| Dedicated Servers | Not listed | |
| Free SSL Certificates | Not listed | |
| Managed Databases | Not listed | |
| Managed Kubernetes | Not listed | |
| Multiple Regions | Not listed | |
| Object Storage | Not listed | |
| Serverless Functions | Not listed | |
| Shared Hosting | Not listed | |
Amazon EKS vs Cloudflare cost by team size
Cloudflare costs less at every team size we checked.
| Team size | Amazon EKS | Cloudflare |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | $73/moStandard support cluster | FreeFree |
| 5 users | $73/moStandard support cluster | FreeFree |
| 10 users | $73/moStandard support cluster | FreeFree |
| 25 users | $73/moStandard support cluster | FreeFree |
| 50 users | $73/moStandard support cluster | FreeFree |
The plan that fits each team size, billed monthly, before add-ons and usage charges. Each cost opens that tool's pricing calculator for the team size.
Who Amazon EKS and Cloudflare suit
Cloudflare fits small business, startups and developers better than Amazon EKS.
| Audience | Amazon EKS | Cloudflare |
|---|---|---|
| Small Business | 3/10Small businesses face complexity and many separately billed components that suit them poorly compared with simpler PaaS hosting. | 7/10Protection is affordable, but support on Free and Pro is limited. |
| Startups | 5/10There is no upfront commitment, but the roughly $73 monthly fee per cluster and the operational overhead are heavy for small teams. | 9/10The free plan includes CDN, DDoS protection and SSL, and paid compute starts at $5 a month. |
| Developers | 6/10Developers get standard upstream Kubernetes, but reviewers say prior Kubernetes experience is needed to use it well. | 9/10Workers, R2 and D1 have generous free tiers and low metered prices. |
| Enterprise | 9/10Large organisations get clusters of up to 100K nodes, a 99.99% provisioned tier, FedRAMP, PCI, and HIPAA coverage, and hybrid deployment. | 8/10Contract plans add 10x to 25x SLA credits, Magic Transit, API Shield and 24x7 phone support. |
| SaaS Companies | 8/10SaaS teams already on AWS can scale container workloads alongside RDS, SQS, and IAM without moving to another platform. | 8/10Edge compute and egress-free storage suit multi-tenant applications. |
| E-commerce | Not rated | 8/10The Business plan includes PCI DSS compliance and an uptime SLA. |
| Government | 7/10EKS is available in AWS GovCloud (US), holds FedRAMP Moderate, and supports air-gapped clusters through EKS Anywhere. | Not rated |
| IT Teams | 7/10Platform and IT teams get fine-grained control over nodes and networking, but they must own upgrades and add-ons. | Not rated |
Which One Should You Choose?
AWhy choose Amazon EKS
- Higher Support score (6/10 vs 4/10)
- Higher Reliability score (9/10 vs 7/10)
Why choose Cloudflare
- Has a free plan (Amazon EKS does not)
- Lower estimated cost for 10 users: Free vs $73/mo
- Higher Cost score (9/10 vs 4/10)
- Higher Ease of Use score (7/10 vs 4/10)
- Better fit for startups (9/10 vs 5/10)
Pros & Cons
AAmazon EKS
Pros
- Scales to clusters of up to 100,000 worker nodes, and reviewers consistently name scalability as its main strength.
- Integrates deeply with AWS: IAM and Pod Identity for pod credentials, ECR, load balancers, VPC Lattice, GuardDuty, and CloudWatch.
- Offers several compute options in one service: EC2 node groups, Fargate serverless pods, Auto Mode, Outposts, Hybrid Nodes, and air-gapped EKS Anywhere.
- Backs the control plane with a financially backed SLA of 99.95%, or 99.99% with Provisioned Control Plane, with credits of up to 100%.
- Holds broad compliance coverage, including SOC, PCI, ISO, FedRAMP Moderate, HITRUST, and HIPAA eligibility.
- Allows version rollback within 7 days of an upgrade at no extra cost.
Cons
- Practitioners call it the least managed of the big three Kubernetes services, because control plane, node, and add-on upgrades are separate manual steps.
- Charges about $73 per month per cluster before any workloads run, and $438 per month once a version falls into extended support. AKS charges no control plane fee on its free tier.
- The default VPC CNI assigns real VPC IPs to pods and can exhaust subnet address space unless IP space is planned in advance.
- Real bills can climb well above estimates because of NAT gateway, cross-AZ transfer, and CloudWatch ingestion costs.
- Reviewers say prior Kubernetes knowledge is needed and the learning curve is steep. Some also note there is no built-in in-console cluster shell like GKE's.
Cloudflare
Pros
- The free plan includes unmetered DDoS protection, a CDN, a WAF and universal SSL.
- R2 object storage charges no egress fees.
- Workers has very low entry pricing: a $5 monthly minimum and $0.30 per additional million requests.
- The Business plan adds a 100 percent uptime SLA and PCI DSS compliance for $200 a month billed annually.
Cons
- Reviewers report slow support on Free and Pro, which have no chat or phone support.
- Global outages in November and December 2025 disrupted many sites at the same time.
- Reviewers report billing problems, such as charges after cancelling add-ons.
- It offers no traditional shared hosting, VPS or dedicated servers, so you still need an origin host for conventional workloads.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Cloudflare scores higher on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria: 7.6/10 against 7.5/10 for Amazon EKS. The largest gap is in Cost: 4/10 for Amazon EKS and 9/10 for Cloudflare.
Cloudflare costs less for 10 users: free on its Free plan, against about $73/mo on its Standard support cluster plan for Amazon EKS, billed monthly.
Cloudflare has a free plan; Amazon EKS does not list one.
Cloudflare is the better fit for small business: we rate it 7/10 for them, against 3/10 for Amazon EKS.
