ECS or EKS for our containers on AWS?
ECS if you don't need Kubernetes, because it's simpler, cheaper and fits SMB scale. EKS if you already have Kubernetes knowledge or want multi-cloud portability.
Try this first
- 1Under 20 services, no Kubernetes mandate from team or contract: ECS Fargate. No control-plane fee, no kubectl experience needed.
- 2Want to reuse Helm charts, a service mesh, or move to GKE/AKS later: EKS. Kubernetes as an entry point.
- 3EKS has a control-plane fee per cluster (~70 USD/month), ECS doesn't. For SMB with one cluster, that's a license per month saved.
- 4For stateless web apps and simple queue workers: ECS Fargate is faster to set up and less long-term ops debt.
- 5For data platforms or ML workloads where add-ons (Karpenter, Argo Workflows) are critical: EKS. The ecosystem is richer.
When to bring us in
If you're torn and just hired your first DevOps engineer, half a day with someone laying your workload requirements against both platforms is usually worth it.
See also
- Everyone logs in with the AWS root accountRoot is for emergencies and billing. Day-to-day work belongs in IAM users or SSO.
- Every developer has AdministratorAccessAdministratorAccess everywhere is convenient now, painful later. Start with role-based policies.
- Everyone has individual IAM users with their own passwordIdentity Center (formerly AWS SSO) links to your IdP and issues temporary credentials per session.
None of the above fits?
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