Kubernetes Cluster
Indicative from-price range
Indicative from-price range for self-hosting Kubernetes Cluster on 4 servers: about $96 to $449 per month (USD), as of 2026-10-19, for the reference workload (Control-plane nodes: 3; Worker nodes: 5; Planned pods per worker: 30). From-price by provider, each the cheapest server in that provider's own shortlist: $96 on DigitalOcean (basic-2vcpu-4gb, 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, fra1); $196 on Google Cloud (e2-standard-2, 2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, us-central1); $254 on Amazon Web Services (c9g.large, 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, us-east-1); $256 on OVHcloud (rise-1, 6 vCPU, 32 GB RAM, eu-west); $265 on Microsoft Azure (D2as_v7, 2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, eastus); $265 on Hetzner (AX41, 6 vCPU, 64 GB RAM, eu-central); $1,049 on Servers.com (dl-01, 8 vCPU, 64 GB RAM, eu-west).
Reference workload
- Control-plane nodes: 3
- Worker nodes: 5
- Planned pods per worker: 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 4, the smallest baseline topology (ha-control-plane-plus-workers). 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 Kubernetes Cluster for your own workloadMarkdown versionFor AI agents (llms.txt)
Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system, originally designed at Google, that automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It is now a CNCF-graduated project and the de facto standard platform for running containers across clusters of machines.
Baseline topologies
| Topology | Minimum nodes | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| ha-control-plane-plus-workers | 4 | control-plane, worker |
| large-cluster | 8 | control-plane, worker |
What drives the cost
- Control-plane nodes
- Number of control-plane nodes. Use 3 or 5 for HA; 1 is development-only. Odd counts required for etcd quorum.
- Worker nodes
- Number of worker nodes serving application workloads.
- Planned pods per worker
- Planned steady-state pod density per worker node. Drives worker memory and CPU sizing.
Where it runs
bare_metal, dedicated, cloud_vm
Size Kubernetes Cluster and get a cost estimate