EKS vs GKE vs AKS: A FinOps Cost Comparison in 2026

EKS vs GKE vs AKS: A FinOps Cost Comparison in 2026 Choosing a managed Kubernetes platform is not just an engineering decision. It is a financial one. The three major providers each have different pricing models, different cost traps, and different optimization levers. Pick the wrong mental model, and you will spend 40% more than you need to. This post walks through every major cost category: control plane fees, compute, egress, load balancers, storage, and observability. It closes with three real team archetypes and what each platform actually costs them per month. The Control Plane Is Not Free (Except on AKS) This is the most underestimated line item in managed Kubernetes. EKS and GKE both charge $0.10 per cluster per hour for the control plane. That is $73 per cluster per month, before a single pod runs. AKS charges nothing for the control plane. Microsoft absorbs that cost entirely. At one cluster, the difference is easy to dismiss. At five clusters, the math becomes harder to igno