Is the AKS control plane free?

The AKS Free tier provides a control plane at no cost but without an uptime SLA or advanced features. The Standard tier costs approximately $0.10/hour and includes a 99.95% uptime SLA (with availability zones), Cluster Autoscaler, and advanced networking features. The Premium tier adds long-term support.

What costs beyond compute should I budget for?

Beyond node VM costs, budget for the Standard Load Balancer (rules and data processing), managed disks for persistent volumes, container registry (ACR), egress data transfer, and optional add-ons like Azure Monitor Container Insights and Azure Policy for AKS.

How can I reduce AKS costs?

Use Spot node pools for fault-tolerant workloads, right-size nodes based on actual resource requests, enable the cluster autoscaler, use Azure Reserved VM Instances for baseline capacity, and consider B-series VMs for development clusters.

Azure AKS Cost Estimator

ComputeAzure

Estimate monthly AKS cluster costs including node pools, load balancers, and managed fees.

AKS Cluster Configuration

Cluster Tier

Node Pool VM Size

Nodes Per Pool

Node Pool Count

Total nodes = nodes per pool x pool count

Load Balancer Type

Managed Disks

OS disk per node (Standard HDD $0.04/GB/mo)

Disk Size Per Node (GB)

Uptime SLA

99.95% SLA for API server (included in Standard/Premium tiers)

Raw Output

Output will appear here...

About This Tool

The Azure AKS Cost Estimator calculates monthly costs for Azure Kubernetes Service clusters including control plane fees, node pool compute, load balancers, and managed add-ons. It supports Standard and Free tier control planes, multiple node pools with different VM sizes, and factors in uptime SLA costs. The tool helps you compare configurations and identify cost optimization opportunities before provisioning clusters.

When to Use This Tool

•Estimating total monthly AKS costs for a production cluster with system and user node pools across availability zones.
•Comparing Standard tier (with SLA) vs. Free tier AKS control plane costs for different environments.
•Modeling node pool scaling scenarios to understand cost impact of autoscaler min/max settings.
•Calculating the cost difference between a single large node pool and multiple specialized node pools.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the AKS control plane free?: The AKS Free tier provides a control plane at no cost but without an uptime SLA or advanced features. The Standard tier costs approximately $0.10/hour and includes a 99.95% uptime SLA (with availability zones), Cluster Autoscaler, and advanced networking features. The Premium tier adds long-term support.
What costs beyond compute should I budget for?: Beyond node VM costs, budget for the Standard Load Balancer (rules and data processing), managed disks for persistent volumes, container registry (ACR), egress data transfer, and optional add-ons like Azure Monitor Container Insights and Azure Policy for AKS.
How can I reduce AKS costs?: Use Spot node pools for fault-tolerant workloads, right-size nodes based on actual resource requests, enable the cluster autoscaler, use Azure Reserved VM Instances for baseline capacity, and consider B-series VMs for development clusters.

Related Learning Guides

AKS vs App Service Decision24 min read
Cost Management Guide24 min read

Disclaimer: This tool runs entirely in your browser. No data is sent to our servers. Always verify outputs before using them in production. AWS, Azure, and GCP are trademarks of their respective owners.