Kubernetes on Cloud (EKS/AKS/GKE) Cheat Sheet
Compares AWS EKS, Azure AKS, and Google GKE managed Kubernetes offerings and shows cluster creation commands for each.
2 PagesAdvancedJan 28, 2026
Managed Kubernetes Comparison
How the three major managed Kubernetes services differ.
- EKS (AWS)- Control plane fee applies; integrates with IAM, VPC CNI, and Fargate for serverless pods
- AKS (Azure)- Free control plane; deep integration with Azure AD and Azure Monitor
- GKE (Google Cloud)- Offers Autopilot mode for fully managed node operations; strong native K8s alignment (Google originated K8s)
- Node Group / Node Pool- A set of worker nodes with the same configuration, managed as a unit
- Cluster Autoscaler- Adds/removes nodes based on pending unschedulable pods and node utilization
Create an EKS Cluster (eksctl)
Fastest path to a working EKS cluster with a managed node group.
bash
eksctl create cluster \ --name my-cluster \ --region us-east-1 \ --nodegroup-name standard-workers \ --node-type t3.medium \ --nodes 3 \ --nodes-min 1 \ --nodes-max 5 \ --managed
Create an AKS Cluster (Azure CLI)
Provision a resource group and AKS cluster.
bash
az group create --name myResourceGroup --location eastusaz aks create \ --resource-group myResourceGroup \ --name myAKSCluster \ --node-count 3 \ --enable-managed-identity \ --generate-ssh-keysaz aks get-credentials --resource-group myResourceGroup --name myAKSCluster
Create a GKE Cluster (gcloud)
Provision a standard GKE cluster.
bash
gcloud container clusters create my-cluster \ --zone us-central1-a \ --num-nodes 3 \ --machine-type e2-mediumgcloud container clusters get-credentials my-cluster --zone us-central1-a
Pro Tip
Pin your cluster's Kubernetes minor version explicitly and upgrade it deliberately — managed services auto-upgrade on a forced schedule (e.g. EKS deprecates old versions), and an untracked forced upgrade can break deprecated API usage in your manifests.
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