AKS vs EKS vs GKE: What’s the Difference?

AKS, EKS, and GKE are managed Kubernetes services on Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud. They share Kubernetes APIs but differ in identity integration, networking defaults, add-ons, upgrade experience, and surrounding cloud services.

Choose based on your primary cloud estate, identity model, team skills, and adjacent services—not isolated Kubernetes feature checklists.

Platform engineering quality usually matters more than minor managed-service differences.

Managed Kubernetes services differ in provider integration, networking, identity, upgrades and operating features. Compare them in the context of your existing estate and support skills rather than treating Kubernetes API compatibility as complete portability.

An evaluation should include application delivery, workload isolation, telemetry, failure handling and cluster lifecycle. Managed control planes still leave workload and platform responsibilities with your team.

Product capabilities and implementation choices change. Use the current primary documentation when validating the requirements for your own environment.