Top managed Kubernetes compared

About Top managed Kubernetes compared

Managed Kubernetes means someone else runs the control plane and the nodes, and you pay for a cluster instead of assembling one. This ranking compares 173 providers that sell that service, from hyperscale platforms to regional operators and a research federated cloud. The trade-off most readers meet first is the control plane charge. A free control plane keeps the opening bill small, and 69.6% of the plans in this category charge one while 30.4% do not. Nodes matter more once a cluster runs: node prices across this ranking run €0.01 to €2,630.01, and control plane prices run €0 to €434.01. Entry prices have a median of €4.88, so a cheap start and a cheap renewal are not the same thing. Renewal prices deserve the same attention. Hourly billing accounts for 61.4% of the plans here and monthly for 76%, and that choice decides how fast an idle cluster accrues cost. Footprint matters too: the median provider in this ranking lists 7 locations, with a low of 1 and a high of 3,000.

How we picked

Each provider in this ranking is scored on three things, and the weights are set before the list is ordered. Cost carries 40%, offer carries 40%, and trust carries 20%. Cost covers what a new cluster pays at entry and what nodes keep costing; offer covers what a plan includes and where it can run; trust covers the legal entity behind the service and the support channels you can reach. Figures come from each provider's own published material: pricing pages for node and control plane prices, company and legal pages for the entity and headquarters, and documentation for support channels. Where a source attaches a qualifier to a figure, the qualifier stays in the copy. Site-wide figures describe the 523 brands tracked across the site, while ranking-wide figures describe this category alone, and the two are kept apart rather than blended. Partners are placed ahead of the rest of the list. Vantage carries a partner label, and its position at the head of the list follows from that label together with its score. Every other member follows on score alone, and each entry is written against the member beside it so the trade-off between neighbouring places is easy to read.

Our top picks

1. 2. Red Hat OpenShift

   Red Hat OpenShift keeps this spot in this ranking with the lowest node starting price among the leaders and the deepest support mix of any member. Red Hat OpenShift lists nodes from $0.076, the free control plane answer is yes, and support runs on chat, phone and email, adding phone and community to chat, email and a help centre. The legal entity is Red Hat, LLC in US, and the company was founded in 1993, the oldest provider listed in this ranking. SberCloud, ranked next, matches that channel spread at email, phone and chat but charges RUB 2.98 for the control plane, where OpenShift waives it.

   • Free control plane: Yes
   • Node price from: $0.076
   • Legal entity: Red Hat, LLC

   Pros

   • The control plane is free, so the node line is the only fixed cost a reader has to size.
   • Node price from ranks 4 of 49 brands on the site, and the site median for that figure is €9.15.
   • Support covers chat, phone and email, so phone and email sit alongside chat for incidents.
   • Against Cloudsmith at $149, the node price from of $0.076 leaves a wide gap for buyers who want the control plane free.

   Cons

   • The free control plane covers the control plane only, so a cluster still bills nodes from $0.076.
   • Node price from of $0.076 sits above Salad's $0.015, which matters most for large worker pools.
   • A free control plane is common on the site, at 66.7% of brands, so it is not by itself a reason to pick this one.
   • Contracting runs through a US entity, Red Hat, LLC in US, which readers outside the US should weigh before adopting.

2. 3. SberCloud

   SberCloud sits in the middle of this ranking as the paid control plane option among the leaders. The SberCloud control plane price is RUB 2.98 and the free control plane answer is no, so that fee applies from the first cluster rather than being waived. Locations run to 9, well short of the 600 sites Cloudsmith offers higher up, while support runs on email, phone and chat, the same broad spread Red Hat OpenShift provides at chat, phone and email. Contracts are handled by LLC Cloud Technologies in RU. Salad, ranked next, lists nodes from $0.015 across a far wider set of sites and keeps support to email, help centre and community.

   • Price per GB per month: RUB 814.68
   • Egress price per GB: RUB 1.15
   • Free egress: 10 TB of outgoing traffic per month

   Pros

   • Outgoing traffic includes 10 TB of outgoing traffic per month each month, so routine transfers cost nothing before RUB 1.15 per GB applies.
   • A free tier plus bonus credits for individuals, legal entities and sole proprietors keeps early testing cheap.
   • Evolution compute starts at RUB 23.75 with 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 30 GB NVMe, billed hourly.
   • GPU capacity covers B300, H100, A100, V100 and A40 from RUB 240 an hour, billed per minute.

   Cons

   • Kubernetes has no free control plane, so every cluster adds RUB 2.98 on top of the node price.
   • Infrastructure sits in RU across 9 locations, so there is no reach outside that market.
   • Storage covers object only, so block and file tiers are not part of the same plan.

3. 4. Salad: best for Lowest node price from

   Salad is the price outlier in this ranking, and that is why it appears on it. Salad lists nodes from $0.015, the lowest starting node price among the members, against a category median of €12.46. The footprint is the counterweight, starting at from 190 sites, far more than the 9 SberCloud offers above it. Support runs on email, help centre and community, which covers email, a help centre and a community but stops short of a phone line. The company is Salad Technologies, Inc. in US, founded in 2018. UCloud, ranked next, sits much higher on price with nodes from $0.96.

   • GPU models: NVIDIA RTX 3060, NVIDIA RTX 3070, NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti, and 6 more
   • GPU hour from: $0.015
   • Billing granularity: Per second

   Pros

   • Billing is per second against an hourly model, so short runs and interrupted jobs pay only for the time they hold a card.
   • Workloads sit in from 190 locations, well above the 6 median in the GPU ranking.
   • The catalogue in NVIDIA RTX 3060, NVIDIA RTX 3070 and NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti spans several RTX generations, the RTX PRO workstation class and selected AMD classes.
   • The AI gateway is OpenAI-compatible, so clients already written against that API can be repointed at Salad.
   • The operator is Salad Technologies, Inc., a US company founded in 2018, with SOC 2 Type I listed for security.

   Cons

   • One GPU per node: None - single-GPU nodes, no multi-GPU NVLink interconnect, so any plan that needs several accelerators inside a single machine has to look elsewhere.
   • Bring your own key is not offered, and the gateway is billed as Flat monthly subscription or pay per token, so you cannot pay through your own provider account.
   • Support runs on email, help centre and community only, with no live chat or phone line listed for urgent issues.
   • A free tier is not offered, and only 27% of the GPU ranking sits in the same paid-only position.

4. 8. Google Cloud

   Google Cloud earns its place in this ranking on scale rather than on entry price. Google Cloud lists a control plane price of $0.10 and $0.10 for a highly available one, and the free control plane answer is yes, which keeps the cluster fee under the category median of €0.07. Locations run to 40 and a single cluster can reach 65,000 nodes, so it suits teams that expect to grow. The legal entity is Google LLC in US. Support runs on help centre and community, a help centre and community, where Densify, ranked next, offers more direct routes at email, chat and phone.

   • Control plane price: $0.10
   • Free control plane: Yes
   • HA control plane price: $0.10

   Pros

   • The control plane is free, and the paid tier sits at $0.10, close to the site median of €0.06.
   • Scale headroom is large: clusters run to 65,000 nodes, well past what most managed offerings in the ranking allow.
   • A free tier and $300 in free credits in credits cover early experiments before any spend.
   • Egress includes 100 a month for North America transfers, which cuts the $0.12 per-GB rate for small-scale traffic.
   • Footprint is wide, with 40 locations and 46 regions, so workloads can sit close to users.

   Cons

   • The control plane is free only inside the allowance, so sustained clusters bill at $0.10 for the standard tier and $0.10 for the highly available one.
   • Egress is charged at $0.12 per GB once the free allowance is used, and traffic to Australia and China is excluded from it.
   • Support runs on help centre and community only, so paid and phone channels are not part of the standard offering.

What to look for

Entry price against the category

Open with what a new cluster pays before it grows. Entry prices in this ranking have a median of €4.88, a lower quartile of €3.08 and an upper quartile of €10.38. Treat that as the starting line, not the renewal line.

Node price, not entry price

The node bill is the line that repeats. Node prices here run €0.01 to €2,630.01, with a median of €12.46, a lower quartile of €3 and an upper quartile of €87.70. Size your cluster first, then read prices.

Whether the control plane is billed

A waived cluster fee is common but not universal. 69.6% of the plans in this category have a free control plane, against 30.4% that bill for one. Where a fee exists, the median is €0.07.

How far the footprint reaches

Sites decide latency, residency and failover options. The median provider in this ranking lists 7 locations, with a low of 1 and a high of 3,000, so a wide map alone does not make a cluster cheap.

Billing period and idle cost

This is the part that decides renewal. Hourly billing covers 61.4% of plans in this category, per-minute 18.2% and per-second 20.5%. A cluster left running overnight keeps costing you at that granularity.

Which support channels exist

How you reach a provider when something breaks. A help centre appears on 89.9% of the plans here, email on 72.2%, community on 49.4%, phone on 46.2% and live chat on 27.2%. A phone line is the rarest of the five.

Frequently asked questions

Top managed Kubernetes compared by country

• Brazil
• Canada
• China
• France
• Germany
• India
• Indonesia
• Italy
• Japan
• Mexico
• South Korea
• Spain
• United Kingdom
• United States
• Vietnam

Providers compared head to head

• AIS Cloud vs Red Hat OpenShift
• AIS Cloud vs SberCloud
• AIS Cloud vs Salad
• Red Hat OpenShift vs SberCloud
• Red Hat OpenShift vs Salad
• SberCloud vs Salad