Node hours, control plane and egress — what a managed K8s cluster really costs.
Kubernetes cost is really node count plus networking. Right-size nodes, bin-pack pods, and watch cross-AZ and load-balancer charges. Compare raw compute on the container hosting cost calculator and networking on the cross-AZ transfer calculator.
This Kubernetes Cluster Cost Calculator estimates your total monthly cluster bill on EKS, GKE, or AKS by combining four inputs: the number of worker nodes, the price per node-hour, the fixed control-plane charge per month, and your egress plus load-balancer costs per month. It multiplies node count by the hourly rate across the month, then adds the control-plane and egress line items to produce a single figure, along with the cost per node. The main drivers are worker-node count and node-hour price, since compute usually dominates the total.
Use it to compare instance sizes: a few large nodes versus many small ones can yield the same capacity at very different per-node costs. Watch the egress and load-balancer figure, which is easy to overlook yet scales with traffic, and remember the control-plane fee is charged per cluster whether nodes are busy or idle.
Per node. The cloud charges for the VMs (worker nodes) plus a flat control-plane fee (about $73/month on EKS/GKE/AKS). Pods are free to schedule — so packing more pods onto each node directly cuts cost by needing fewer nodes.
Cross-AZ data transfer (each hop between zones is billed), load balancers (one per exposed service adds up), persistent volumes, and NAT gateways. These networking extras often rival the compute bill on a busy cluster.
Cost at different volumes:
| Volume | Monthly | Yearly |
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