kubernetes

Free: All of Kubernetes: API server, scheduler, controller manager, kubelet, kubectl. Apache License 2.0, no paid edition, no gated features. kind or minikube run a local cluster on a laptop for $0.

Self-hosted: You can run your own control plane on bare metal or VMs, but you also own etcd, upgrades, certificates, and every add-on a production cluster needs (ingress or Gateway API controller, cert-manager, monitoring, logging, storage). The project patches only the three newest minor releases (currently 1.37, 1.36, 1.35), each for about a year; 1.34 reaches end of life on 2026-10-27. Expect to upgrade every few months.

Paid: The software is free; managed control planes are where the bills are. EKS: $0.10 per cluster per hour (about $73/month) for versions in standard support (14 months), $0.60 per cluster per hour in extended support. GKE: $0.10 per cluster per hour for every mode, with a $74.40 monthly credit per billing account that covers one Autopilot or zonal cluster (not regional); extended support adds $0.50 for $0.60 total. AKS: Free tier with no SLA (not recommended past 10 nodes), Standard $73 per cluster per month, Premium with long-term support $438 per cluster per month, AKS Automatic $116.80 per cluster per month plus a per-vCPU management charge. DigitalOcean: free control plane, $40/month for high availability, nodes from $12/month each. All prices exclude worker nodes, storage, load balancers and bandwidth.