Introduction
The decision between self-hosted Kubernetes and managed services like GKE, EKS, or AKS is often framed purely as a cost decision. However, the true cost involves much more than just the management fee.
The Hidden Costs of Self-Hosted Kubernetes
Control Plane Infrastructure
Running your own control plane requires:
- 3+ master nodes for high availability
- etcd cluster management
- Load balancers for API server access
- Backup and disaster recovery infrastructure
Estimated Monthly Cost: $300-800 for a production-grade setup
Engineering Time
The real cost of self-hosted Kubernetes is engineering time:
- Initial setup: 40-80 hours
- Ongoing maintenance: 10-20 hours/month
- Upgrades: 20-40 hours per major version
- Troubleshooting: Varies significantly
At 1,500-3,000/month minimum.
Security and Compliance
Self-hosted requires additional investment in:
- Certificate management
- Security patching
- Compliance documentation
- Audit logging infrastructure
Managed Kubernetes Costs
GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine)
- Standard Tier: Free control plane, pay for nodes
- Autopilot: Pay per pod, ~$0.02/vCPU/hour premium
- Enterprise: $0.10/cluster/hour + node costs
EKS (Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service)
- Control Plane: 73/month)
- Fargate: Additional compute premium
- Node costs: Standard EC2 pricing
AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service)
- Control Plane: Free
- Node costs: Standard Azure VM pricing
- Premium features: Additional cost
Break-Even Analysis
Small Clusters (< 10 nodes)
Recommendation: Managed Kubernetes
At this scale, the engineering overhead of self-hosted exceeds the managed service premium significantly.
| Self-Hosted | Managed (GKE) | |
|---|---|---|
| Infrastructure | $400/mo | $0-73/mo |
| Engineering | $2,000/mo | $200/mo |
| Total | $2,400/mo | $273/mo |
Medium Clusters (10-50 nodes)
Recommendation: Depends on team expertise
The economics start to shift, but still favor managed for most teams.
| Self-Hosted | Managed (GKE) | |
|---|---|---|
| Infrastructure | $600/mo | $73/mo |
| Engineering | $2,500/mo | $500/mo |
| Node Savings | -$500/mo | $0 |
| Total | $2,600/mo | $573/mo |
Large Clusters (50+ nodes)
Recommendation: Consider self-hosted with dedicated platform team
At scale, the math can favor self-hosted if you have platform engineering expertise.
| Self-Hosted | Managed (GKE) | |
|---|---|---|
| Infrastructure | $1,000/mo | $73/mo |
| Engineering | $4,000/mo | $1,000/mo |
| Node Savings | -$3,000/mo | $0 |
| Total | $2,000/mo | $1,073/mo |
When Self-Hosted Makes Sense
- Scale: 100+ nodes where you can spread platform team costs
- Expertise: Existing Kubernetes platform team
- Compliance: Specific requirements not met by managed services
- Multi-Cloud: Need consistency across providers
- Edge/Bare Metal: Non-cloud environments
When Managed Makes Sense
- Small Teams: Less than 50 engineers
- Startup: Need to move fast without infrastructure overhead
- Single Cloud: Committed to one provider
- Standard Requirements: No exotic compliance needs
Conclusion
For most organizations, managed Kubernetes is the better choice. The control plane fee ($0-73/month) is trivial compared to the engineering time saved. Self-hosted only makes sense at significant scale with a dedicated platform team.
Need help deciding? Contact us for a personalized assessment of your infrastructure needs.
