K3s Cluster
Indicative from-price range
Indicative from-price range for self-hosting K3s Cluster on 1 server: about $24 to $112 per month (USD), as of 2026-10-19, for the reference workload (Server nodes: 3; Agent nodes: 3; Planned pods per agent node: 30). From-price by provider, each the cheapest server in that provider's own shortlist: $24 on DigitalOcean (basic-2vcpu-4gb, 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, fra1); $49 on Google Cloud (e2-standard-2, 2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, us-central1); $63 on Amazon Web Services (c9g.large, 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, us-east-1); $64 on OVHcloud (rise-1, 6 vCPU, 32 GB RAM, eu-west); $66 on Microsoft Azure (D2as_v7, 2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, eastus); $66 on Hetzner (AX41, 6 vCPU, 64 GB RAM, eu-central); $262 on Servers.com (dl-01, 8 vCPU, 64 GB RAM, eu-west).
Reference workload
- Server nodes: 3
- Agent nodes: 3
- Planned pods per agent node: 30
Methodology
This range is generated automatically from public provider price lists. It has not been reviewed by a person, it is not a quote, and it may differ from the total the calculator chooses for your own workload with its AI step. Method: the calculator's offer shortlist for the reference workload (the same ranking it builds before the AI step, up to 12 offers across providers; 12 here) is priced at its monthly list price in USD. The low end is the cheapest of the per-provider from-prices below and the high end is the median server of the combined shortlist, each multiplied by 1, the smallest baseline topology (single-server). The from-price for each provider applies the same method to that provider's own shortlist (the calculator's ranking restricted to that provider), so it is the cheapest server that ranking offers there, not a recommendation. Prices are taken from the price snapshot dated 2026-10-19; prices quoted in EUR are converted with the ECB reference rate dated 2026-10-19. Servers with fewer than 2 vCPU or less than 4 GB RAM are not priced. Only server rental list prices for the product's own servers are counted: dependencies, licences, support, traffic charges, taxes and setup fees are not included.
Price sources
- Amazon Web Services: https://pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/offers/v1.0/aws/AmazonEC2/current/us-east-1/index.json
- DigitalOcean: https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/droplets
- Google Cloud: https://cloudbilling.googleapis.com/v1/services/6F81-5844-456A/skus
- Hetzner: https://www.hetzner.com/_resources/app/data/app/live_data_en_EUR.json
- Microsoft Azure: https://prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices
- OVHcloud: https://eu.api.ovh.com/1.0/order/catalog/public/eco?ovhSubsidiary=FR
- Servers.com: https://www.servers.com/products/scalable-bare-metal
Size K3s Cluster for your own workloadMarkdown versionFor AI agents (llms.txt)
k3s is a lightweight, CNCF-certified Kubernetes distribution built by Rancher/SUSE that packages the control plane and its dependencies into a single small binary. It targets resource-constrained environments such as edge, IoT, and CI use cases where running full upstream Kubernetes is impractical.
Baseline topologies
| Topology | Minimum nodes | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| single-server | 1 | k3s-server |
| ha-control-plane-plus-agents | 4 | k3s-server, k3s-agent |
What drives the cost
- Server nodes
- Number of K3s server nodes. Use an odd count for embedded etcd quorum; use 1 for very small or development clusters.
- Agent nodes
- Number of K3s agent nodes dedicated to running workloads.
- Planned pods per agent node
- Planned steady-state pod density on each agent node. Drives agent node memory and CPU sizing.
Where it runs
bare_metal, dedicated, cloud_vm
Size K3s Cluster and get a cost estimate