Amazon EKS
Hacker ApprovedThe most recommended of 4 managed Kubernetes services
Managed Kubernetes on AWS that runs the control plane, so people can deploy containers with little upkeep. Common caveat: costs add up at scale and it still needs looking after.
Managed Kubernetes on AWS that runs the control plane, so people can deploy containers with little upkeep. Common caveat: costs add up at scale and it still needs looking after.
41 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 28
- criticize it
- 13
- approval share
- 68%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 28 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Little ongoing maintenance needed
“If you go cloud managed (EKS etc), there isn't really much to take care of.”
Comment from 6 May 2026 in “Should I Run Plain Docker Compose in Production in 2026?” “you set it up once and then it's mostly done, including security, etc.”
Comment from 1 Feb 2026 in “Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native” “the day-to-day operations are not that heavy”
Comment from 23 Dec 2025 in “10 years bootstrapped: €6.5M revenue with a team of 13” - Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “A $1k AWS mistake”
Turnkey managed Kubernetes setup
“EKS is literally one click of a button away and you dont need to handroll this.”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Zero-Downtime Deployments with Docker Compose – No Kubernetes Required” “Using a cloud provider ( eks / aks / gke ) is trivial and "problem" free.”
Comment from 17 Jun 2026 in “What job interviews taught me about Kubernetes” “AWS EKS, GCP GKE, and other competitors have made k8s setup turnkey”
Comment from 16 Jun 2026 in “What job interviews taught me about Kubernetes” - Comment from 7 Apr 2026 in “Google Open Sources Experimental Agent Orchestration Testbed Scion”
Reliable and straightforward to run
“Managed k8s services like EKS have been super reliable the last few years.”
Comment from 26 Jan 2026 in “The future of software engineering is SRE” “Never have issues with stable services like S3, ECS, EKS, or RDS.”
Comment from 31 Jan 2026 in “Google Cloud suspended my account for 2 years, only automated replies” “EKS, which by the way has been working very good for me”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “I Am Building a Cloud” - Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “I Am Building a Cloud”
Runs most apps and third-party software
“pretty much any normal service or app you need to run can be deployed on that”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “A $1k AWS mistake” “it's actually been really good for installing 3rd party software so far”
Comment from 16 Jun 2026 in “What job interviews taught me about Kubernetes”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Needs ongoing babysitting and management
“EKS is more complex, and needs a bit more looking after.”
Comment from 18 Sep 2026 in “Ask HN: Help choosing between AWS ECS and EKS” “The reason was the "management" overhead of babysitting the cluster”
Comment from 18 Sep 2026 in “Ask HN: Help choosing between AWS ECS and EKS” “AWS makes you do things like manage node OS and addon versions”
Comment from 8 Jul 2026 in “Understanding ECS from Kubernetes Perspective” - Comment from 29 Aug 2026 in “The Twelve-Factor App (2025)”
Costs add up at scale
“At 20000 nodes you are looking at $340 million/year, not including egress fees or any other AWS service charges”
Comment from 1 Jul 2026 in “Netflix Simplified Batch Compute with Kueue” “for ~$70/month, you get the cluster API, not the EC2 compute required for worker nodes”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “Cheap Self-Hosted Kubernetes on Hetzner Cloud” “spinning up multiple eks clusters is ridiculously expensive”
Comment from 6 Aug 2026 in “Celld: Self-hosted, distributed Durable Objects” Noisy cluster health warnings
“EKS has all sorts of these warning flags it pops up on cluster health”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “A $1k AWS mistake” “EKS warnings are useful, I've grown a habit to ignore them completely”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “A $1k AWS mistake” Networking limits for IPv6 and overlays
“There's no such thing as an IPv6-only EKS cluster, every subnet you give EKS still needs an IPv4 CIDR”
Comment from 22 Sep 2026 in “Deploying IPv6-First EKS on AWS: What Still Doesn't Work, and What It Saves” “Even on AWS EKS, you will run into bullshit with their network overlay.”
Comment from 15 Jun 2026 in “What job interviews taught me about Kubernetes”
Other managed Kubernetes services people recommend
The three most recommended other managed Kubernetes services, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon EKSThis page | 28 | 13 | 68% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Google Kubernetes Engine | 6 | 0 | 100% | 5 | — | — |
| Google Kubernetes Engine | 6 | 4 | 60% | 5 | — | — |
| DigitalOcean Kubernetes | 6 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
39 of the 43 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“There's no such thing as an IPv6-only EKS cluster, every subnet you give EKS still needs an IPv4 CIDR”
“EKS is more complex, and needs a bit more looking after.”
“The reason was the "management" overhead of babysitting the cluster”
“got tired of managing EKS”
“spinning up multiple eks clusters is ridiculously expensive”
“for ~$70/month, you get the cluster API, not the EC2 compute required for worker nodes”
“AWS makes you do things like manage node OS and addon versions”
“At 20000 nodes you are looking at $340 million/year, not including egress fees or any other AWS service charges”
“EKS can get pretty damn big, well into the thousands of nodes without much special tuning”
“it can't run without some sort of orchestration layer like EKS or ECS”
“EKS is literally one click of a button away and you dont need to handroll this.”
“Using a cloud provider ( eks / aks / gke ) is trivial and "problem" free.”
“EKS and other k8s managed systems will have an LTS version based on the k8s LTS”
“AWS EKS, GCP GKE, and other competitors have made k8s setup turnkey”
“it's actually been really good for installing 3rd party software so far”
“having to monitor and manually scale the built in DNS service or else my queries are just going to stop resolving”
“"completely" in my experience”
“Even on AWS EKS, you will run into bullshit with their network overlay.”
“Use EC2, EBS, S3, Route53 plus EKS, RDS, ElastiCache.”
“You could use EKS, ECS or bare EC2.”
“If you go cloud managed (EKS etc), there isn't really much to take care of.”
“imo a multi-account EKS cluster is a bare minimum”
“EKS has been pretty straightforward to work with”
“EKS, which by the way has been working very good for me”
“much easier to bring online these days with managed offerings”
“It is wild to me that AWS didn’t ship EKS with delete protection out of the gate”
“you set it up once and then it's mostly done, including security, etc.”
“Never have issues with stable services like S3, ECS, EKS, or RDS.”
“Managed k8s services like EKS have been super reliable the last few years.”
“the day-to-day operations are not that heavy”
“has become a practical and scalable approach for organizations that want full control”
“I think everyone going to EKS before they need to is dumb.”
“distributions like EKS churning out 3 releases per year”
“EKS warnings are useful, I've grown a habit to ignore them completely”
“pretty much any normal service or app you need to run can be deployed on that”
“RDS + EKS for a couple hundred a month is an amazing deal for what is essentially zero maintenance application hosting”
“managed services can make life much simpler”
“EKS has all sorts of these warning flags it pops up on cluster health”
“with EKS and cloud-init these days i dont find any need to even bake AMIs anymore”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.