Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service

UpOpen Sourcecloud by Amazon Web Services★62· JavaScript· MIT

Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) API creates and manages Kubernetes clusters with AWS-managed control plane.

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Use it when

Native Kubernetes compatibility (use kubectl directly)

Watch for

Monthly control plane fee ($0.10/hour)

First check

POST /eks/CreateCluster to create cluster with VPC + subnets + IAM role. CreateNodegroup to add EC2 workers, or CreateFargateProfile for Fargate.

Auth

—

CORS

HTTPS

Yes

Signup

Latency

22 ms

Protocol

REST

Pricing

—

Stars

Uptime · 30-day window

Probes: 30Uptime: 100%Avg latency: 50ms

GitHub activity

★ 62JavaScriptMIT17 open issuesLast commit 155d ago

About this API

EKS is AWS's managed Kubernetes service — use standard K8s without managing the control plane yourself. Core difference vs. ECS: ECS is AWS's proprietary container orchestrator (simpler API, deeper AWS integration, but AWS lock-in); EKS is standard K8s (rich community ecosystem, portable to other clouds, but ops is more complex than ECS). Decision logic: long-term AWS-only + team without K8s experience → ECS. Multi-cloud / existing K8s experience / need rich K8s ecosystem (Istio, Knative, Argo) → EKS. EKS workers can be EC2 (self-managed nodes) or Fargate (serverless, billed per pod resources), and can be mixed. AWS has made EKS very stable; mainstream choice for large enterprise container platforms.

What you can build

1Run containerized apps requiring full K8s ecosystem
2Multi-cluster federation management
3Mixed worker types (EC2 + Fargate)
4GitOps workflows

Strengths & limitations

Strengths

Native Kubernetes compatibility (use kubectl directly)
Fully managed control plane (no self-managed etcd, scheduler)
Deep integration with AWS networking/IAM
Fargate worker option for serverless containers

Limitations

Monthly control plane fee ($0.10/hour)
More complex than ECS (steep K8s learning curve)
AWS-specific integrations not as deep as ECS

Getting started

POST /eks/CreateCluster to create cluster with VPC + subnets + IAM role. CreateNodegroup to add EC2 workers, or CreateFargateProfile for Fargate.

FAQ

EKS vs. ECS?+

Team K8s experience + multi-cloud potential: EKS. AWS-only + want simple: ECS. Both mature and stable.

EKS Fargate vs. EC2 worker?+

Fargate is simple (serverless) but per-pod cost is slightly higher than self-managed EC2. Use Fargate for short bursts; EC2 + Reserved Instances is cheaper for steady load.