Amazon EKS vs Portainer
No leader: the top candidate Portainer has only 0.21 confidence (low), below the 0.35 needed to declare a winner. The attribute-by-attribute breakdown below, with a source and date on every value, is the honest way to compare them.
Capabilities
Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for container orchestration tools. “-” means undocumented, not absent.
What each one is
The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.
Amazon EKS
A fully managed Kubernetes platform that automates cluster and infrastructure management, allowing teams to build and run production-grade containerized workloads with AWS's operational reliability and security. Supports unified workload management across cloud, on-premises, and edge locations.
Portainer
Portainer provides centralized governance of Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, and Podman across multiple clusters and environments. It includes role-based access control, GitOps deployment workflows, centralized authentication, and audit logging from a single management console.
Pricing
List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.
Amazon EKS
From $0.10/hour. Pay-as-you-go with hourly billing, no minimum fees or upfront commitments. Additional charges for EC2 instances, storage, and optional features.
- Kubernetes Version Support - Standard Tier$0.10/hour for first 14 months
- Standard Kubernetes version support for 14 months
- Kubernetes Version Support - Extended Tier$0.60/hour for remaining 12 months
- Extended Kubernetes version support for 12 months
Portainer
From $1,045/year. Free tier: 3 nodes.
- Starter$1,045/year
- Community support
- Online purchase only
- Scale$2,095/year
- 9x5 next business day support
- Vendor onboarding
- Available through resellers
- EnterpriseContact sales
- 9x5 support with 24/7 option
- Assigned support engineer
- Security assessment report
- TAA compliance certificate
- Production and non-production nodes
- +2 more
Platform & deployment
Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.
Integrations
What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.
Amazon EKS
- Cast AI
- Tailscale
- 1Password
- Okta
- Trend Micro
- Orca Security
- Vanta
- Arctic Wolf
- Asana
- LucidLink
- Brave Search API
- Argo CD
- AWS Controllers for Kubernetes
- Kubernetes Resource Orchestrator
Portainer
- Active Directory
- LDAP
- OAuth
- Helm
- Git repositories
- Kubernetes (EKS, AKS, GKE)
- Docker
- Swarm
- Podman
- Talos
- Omni
- S3-compatible storage
- OPC connectivity
- MQTT
- Argo
- Flux
- Docker Hub
- Matomo Analytics
- Kubernetes
- Docker Swarm
- Git
- OPA Gatekeeper
- Slack
- Matomo
- +6 more
Amazon EKS or Portainer: which one depends on you
A composite score cannot know your constraints. Describe them and both get re-weighted against what you actually need, with the evidence behind every position.
Free to run, no account needed to start. How the evaluation works
Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.