Updated 2 November 2026 · Published by Zoorik
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is Microsoft’s managed Kubernetes service in Azure. Azure runs the control plane, and your apps run on nodes, which are Azure virtual machines (VMs).
AKS vs Kubernetes
Kubernetes is the open-source system that runs containerized apps across a cluster of machines. AKS is Kubernetes on Azure, certified by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). Azure takes care of the control plane’s health monitoring and maintenance.
AKS also ties your cluster into Azure:
- Kubernetes access through Microsoft Entra ID, based on your existing users and groups.
- Azure Policy guardrails for compliance controls.
- Azure Disks and Azure Files for storage, through their Container Storage Interface (CSI) drivers.
- Container Insights, in Azure Monitor, for your cluster’s health and performance.
What an AKS cluster is made of
Every AKS cluster has at least one node. Each node runs the kubelet, a container runtime and kube-proxy. Clusters that use Azure CNI powered by Cilium run Cilium instead of kube-proxy.
- Nodes are grouped into node pools. By default, a node pool uses Virtual Machine Scale Sets to manage its VMs.
- A system node pool hosts critical system pods, such as CoreDNS. User node pools host your apps.
- AKS puts the cluster’s VMs, scale sets and storage in a second resource group, the node resource group.
AKS Automatic vs AKS Standard
AKS has two cluster modes. AKS Automatic is fully managed, with production-ready defaults. AKS Standard gives you full control of cluster configuration and node pools.
| AKS Automatic | AKS Standard | |
|---|---|---|
Node management | Azure creates, scales and upgrades nodes with node auto-provisioning | You create and manage node pools |
Scaling | Manual by default, with the cluster autoscaler and KEDA optional | |
Cluster upgrades | Automatic, on the stable channel | Manual by default, with an automatic upgrade channel optional |
Security and monitoring | On by default | Opt-in, feature by feature |
Microsoft recommends AKS Automatic for most new workloads. AKS Standard fits when you need Windows node pools, custom networking, or VM sizes not yet in Automatic.
Why AKS matters for your cloud cost
Your nodes are charged as standard Azure VMs, by VM type and how long they run, and Azure reservations apply. A node costs the same however little its pods use.
Cluster management has three pricing tiers:
- Free: no charge for cluster management, and no financially backed uptime service level agreement (SLA).
- Standard: a paid tier, with an uptime SLA and up to 5,000 nodes.
- Premium: Standard’s uptime SLA, plus Long Term Support (LTS) for Kubernetes versions.
AKS Automatic has its own control plane and compute pricing, with the Standard tier included. AKS vs EKS cost lists each fee, and the EKS and AKS pricing calculator gives one node’s monthly list price.
The control plane’s scheduler places pods on nodes by their requests, not their real use. Requests set above real use keep more nodes running, and you pay for each one.
Coral rebalances CPU and memory requests on AKS to match real use, so the same pods fit on fewer nodes. It drains spare nodes so your autoscaler can remove them.
Read next: How to choose AKS VM sizes
Sources: Microsoft Learn, “What is Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?” (opens in a new tab); Microsoft Learn, “Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Core Concepts” (opens in a new tab); Microsoft Learn, “Introduction to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Automatic” (opens in a new tab); Microsoft Learn, “Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Free, Standard, and Premium Pricing Tiers” (opens in a new tab); Microsoft Azure, “Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) pricing” (opens in a new tab); Kubernetes, “Cluster Architecture” (opens in a new tab); Kubernetes, “Resource Management for Pods and Containers” (opens in a new tab).