Top Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) Alternatives & Competitors 2026

Reviewed in Last 12 Months

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1. Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS)

4.5

My overall experience with Amazon EKS has been highly positive. I was involved in the decision-making process, and my team acts as an end-user, relying on EKS for efficient pod management. Prior to adopting EKS approximately four to five months ago, we utilized Amazon's Auto Scaling Groups (ASGs) for pod management. This approach, however, proved to be more akin to static pod management, which presented challenges when dealing with sudden increases in load, such as thousands of transactions per second. This static nature was not conducive to handling dynamic load variations effectively, often leading to queuing experiences for users. The transition to EKS was driven by the need for a more dynamic and robust solution capable of managing operational heavy lifting outside the direct context of developers. EKS, as a service, offers flexible options for nodes, allowing us to choose between self-managed nodes, Fargate instances, or managed nodes, among other configurations. Having prior experience with non-managed Kubernetes implementations, the Amazon-managed version of Kubernetes offered by EKS was a significant advantage, aligning with our existing use of Amazon managed services at our organisation. Key factors in our selection of EKS included its seamless integration with other AWS services, which was paramount given our existing AWS infrastructure. We sought easy access to networking components such as Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs), load balancers, and security groups, essential for thousands of servers running and interacting with new pods managed by EKS. The "plug and play" nature of EKS, particularly its integration with the Kubernetes Role-Based Access Control system, simplifies identity and access management through Amazon, eliminating the need to rely on external vendors for IAM roles and permissions. This design was a primary reason for our adoption of EKS. Our internal adoption process was meticulous and successful. As part of a centralized infra team and a dedicated DevOps team, we conducted a Proof of Concept (POC) within our team. During this POC, we implemented a service on EKS that was previously running on ASGs, our previous Amazon product. We ran parallel services, for example, running the US region on ECS and Europe on EKS, for a week to gather comparative data. The results were then showcased to various leaders across 25-30 different groups, demonstrating cost optimization, technology innovation, monitoring cost, efficiency, response time, and overall AWS service costs. This approach facilitated adoption across multiple teams, though some are still in the process of implementation. Measuring the Return on Investment (ROI) of EKS involves several critical metrics. We assess the cost of infrastructure for running the same load compared to other solutions, aiming for significant cost reductions (e.g., from $1000 on ECS to $700 on EKS). Second, we evaluate the capability of the infrastructure to handle burst loads – situations where load increases substantially – ensuring it can still manage all requests. Third, we consider how frequently the service provider, Amazon, supports advancements in technology and new versions. These three metrics guide our evaluation and adoption of new services. In terms of scalability, EKS performs exceptionally well. Once the architectural decisions regarding deployment are made, changes are minimal. The primary areas for adjustment are updates to the base templates, known as Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). For instance, if an AMI version changes, revisions may be necessary. Otherwise, services are scaled by updating configurations (e.g., YAML files) to adjust the number of pods. If a service needs to handle more load, we can simply increase the maximum number of pods, from say, 1 to 1000 replicas, and EKS automatically spins up the necessary instances, eliminating manual deployments. Once templates are sorted, there's generally no need for significant changes unless there is a version upgrade on EKS, which might incur support costs for legacy versions.Read all insights and reviews for Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS)

Where Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) Scored Higher

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2. AWS Fargate

By Amazon Web Services (AWS)

4.6

(98 Ratings)

Our overall experience has been smooth as a small startup, as it lets us run ECS tasks without worrying about provisioning or maintaining EC2 instances. It integrates very well with our existing AWS stack as well. It's a good booster at the start, but costs can spike with long-running workloads Read all insights and reviews for AWS Fargate

Where Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) Scored Higher

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3. Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

By Google

4.5

(81 Ratings)

My overall experience with Google Kubernetes Engine has been very positive. GKE makes managing Kubernetes clusters much easier than running them on-prem or manually in the cloud.Read all insights and reviews for Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

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4. VMware Tanzu Platform

By Broadcom (VMware)

4.4

(76 Ratings)

VMWare Tanzu Platform offers strong Kubernetes management and scalability, but its complexity is challenging. Especially for the initial setup and integrations, but luckily the documentation is clear.Read all insights and reviews for VMware Tanzu Platform

Where Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) Scored Higher

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Better at delivery and execution
Easier to integrate and deploy
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5. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

By Microsoft

4.6

(72 Ratings)

AKS helps automate and scale enterprise business solutions across domains and regions with ease. It comes with a simplified managed interface for users across clusters who are pre-validated and provided with access via a managed identity resource platform.Read all insights and reviews for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Where Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) Scored Higher

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6. SUSE Rancher

By SUSE

4.5

(54 Ratings)

SUSE have been fantastic to work with, our working relationship is strong and they have always delivered on the promises that they have made to us. Highly rate the account management and support. Support is also fantastic, they are knowledgeable and deliver exceptional levels of outcomes Read all insights and reviews for SUSE Rancher

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7. Portainer

By Portainer

4.8

(41 Ratings)

Extremely easy to implement, easy to use UI and a must for both personal and professional use.Read all insights and reviews for Portainer

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8. Huawei Cloud Container Engine

By Huawei

4.6

(39 Ratings)

Together with Huawei, we have had a great experience using CCE. This has allowed us to deploy our artifacts while Huawei handles the entire orchestration layer. The nodes in Huawei can scale up and down elastically. Huawei has enabled us to accelerate our time to market and take advantage of the benefits of portability and scalability, providing a high degree of flebilibity. Our microservices have performed well, and for us, the use of Kubernetes has been seamless. Read all insights and reviews for Huawei Cloud Container Engine

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