Cluster management pricing tiers for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Applies to: ✔️ AKS Automatic ✔️ AKS Standard

Manage your Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters using AKS pricing tiers. This article explains the differences between these tiers, when to use each tier, and how to create or update AKS clusters using Azure CLI.

About AKS pricing tiers

AKS offers three pricing tiers for cluster management:

Free
Standard
Premium

SKU and tier relationship:

Base SKU clusters can use any of the three pricing tiers: Free, Standard, or Premium.
Automatic SKU clusters are preconfigured to use the Standard tier during cluster creation.

AKS Automatic production default

For most production workloads, AKS Automatic is the recommended production-ready default experience for AKS.

AKS Automatic clusters are preconfigured with:

Standard tier cluster management
Support for up to 5,000 nodes
Cluster uptime SLA coverage
Pod readiness SLA coverage, where 99.9% of qualifying pod readiness operations complete within five minutes

For platform-level details, see What is Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Automatic?

AKS pricing tiers comparison

The following table compares Free, Standard, and Premium pricing tiers for AKS cluster management:

Tier	When to use	Supported cluster types	Pricing	Feature comparison
Free	Development and test environments, learning, evaluation, and non-production workloads.	Development clusters or small-scale test environments. Recommended for clusters with fewer than 10 nodes.	Free cluster management. Pay as you go for consumed resources.	Includes all current AKS features. Supports up to 1,000 nodes. No financially backed uptime SLA.
Standard	Production workloads requiring uptime SLA coverage. Enterprise workloads. Default and preconfigured tier for Automatic SKU clusters.	Enterprise-grade or production workloads with up to 5,000 nodes.	Pay as you go for consumed resources. See Standard tier pricing details.	Uptime SLA enabled by default. Higher reliability profile. Includes all current AKS features. Supports up to 5,000 nodes.
Premium	Production workloads requiring uptime SLA plus 24-month Long Term Support (LTS) Kubernetes version support. Regulated environments requiring extended maintenance windows.	Enterprise-grade or production workloads with up to 5,000 nodes.	Pay as you go for consumed resources. See Premium tier pricing details.	Includes all current AKS features plus Microsoft maintenance beyond community support.

Uptime SLA terms and conditions

Standard and Premium tiers include uptime SLA by default:

With availability zones: 99.95% availability of the Kubernetes API server
Without availability zones: 99.9% availability of the Kubernetes API server
Free tier: best-effort uptime (no financially backed SLA)

AKS Automatic clusters are preconfigured with Standard tier and include both cluster uptime SLA and pod readiness SLA coverage.

For more information, see the AKS SLA.

Region availability

The following table outlines AKS pricing tier availability by region:

Region type	Available pricing tiers
Public regions and Azure Government regions where AKS is supported	Free, Standard, Premium
Private AKS clusters in all public regions where AKS is supported	Free, Standard, Premium

Prerequisites

Azure CLI version 2.47.0 or later. To check your current version, run az --version. To install or upgrade, see Install Azure CLI.
An existing resource group, or permission to create one. To learn more, see Manage resource groups by using Azure CLI.

Create a resource group

Create a resource group using the az group create command.

# Set environment variables
export REGION=<your-region>
export RESOURCE_GROUP=<your-resource-group-name>

# Create the resource group
az group create --name $RESOURCE_GROUP --location $REGION

Example output:

{
  "id": "/subscriptions/xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx/resourceGroups/"<your-resource-group-name>",
  "location": "<your-region>",
  "managedBy": null,
  "name": "<your-resource-group-name>",
  "properties": {
    "provisioningState": "Succeeded"
  },
  "tags": null,
  "type": "Microsoft.Resources/resourceGroups"
}

Create an AKS cluster in the Free tier

Create an AKS cluster in the Free tier using the az aks create command with the --tier parameter set to free.

# Set environment variables
export RESOURCE_GROUP=<your-resource-group-name>
export CLUSTER_NAME=<your-aks-cluster-name>

# Create the AKS cluster
az aks create \
    --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \
    --name $CLUSTER_NAME \
    --tier free \
    --generate-ssh-keys

Example output:

{
  ...
  "sku": {
    "name": "Base",
    "tier": "Free"
  },
  ...
}

Create an AKS cluster in the Standard tier

Create an AKS cluster in the Standard tier using the az aks create command with the --tier parameter set to standard.

# Set environment variables
export RESOURCE_GROUP=<your-resource-group-name>
export CLUSTER_NAME=<your-aks-cluster-name>

# Create the AKS cluster
az aks create \
    --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \
    --name $CLUSTER_NAME \
    --tier standard \
    --generate-ssh-keys

Example output:

{
  ...
  "sku": {
    "name": "Base",
    "tier": "Standard"
  },
  ...
}

Create an AKS cluster in the Premium tier

Important

When you create a cluster in the Premium tier, you must also enable the LTS plan by setting the --k8s-support-plan parameter to AKSLongTermSupport. Enable or disable LTS and the Premium tier together.

Create an AKS cluster in the Premium tier using the az aks create command with the --tier parameter set to premium and the --k8s-support-plan parameter set to AKSLongTermSupport.

# Set environment variables
export RESOURCE_GROUP=<your-resource-group-name>
export CLUSTER_NAME=<your-aks-cluster-name>

# Create the AKS cluster
az aks create \
    --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \
    --name $CLUSTER_NAME \
    --tier premium \
    --k8s-support-plan AKSLongTermSupport \
    --generate-ssh-keys

Example output:

{
  ...
  "sku": {
    "name": "Base",
    "tier": "Premium"
  },
  "supportPlan": "AKSLongTermSupport",
  ...
}

Update an existing cluster from the Standard tier to the Free tier

Update an existing cluster from the Standard tier to the Free tier using the az aks update command with the --tier parameter set to free.

# Set environment variables
export RESOURCE_GROUP=<your-resource-group-name>
export CLUSTER_NAME=<your-aks-cluster-name>

# Update the AKS cluster
az aks update --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --name $CLUSTER_NAME --tier free

Example output:

{
  ...
  "sku": {
    "name": "Base",
    "tier": "Free"
  },
  ...
}

Update an existing cluster from the Free tier to the Standard tier

Update an existing cluster from the Free tier to the Standard tier using the az aks update command with the --tier parameter set to standard.

# Set environment variables
export RESOURCE_GROUP=<your-resource-group-name>
export CLUSTER_NAME=<your-aks-cluster-name>

# Update the AKS cluster
az aks update --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --name $CLUSTER_NAME --tier standard

Example output:

{
  ...
  "sku": {
    "name": "Base",
    "tier": "Standard"
  },
  ...
}

Update an existing cluster to or from the Premium tier

Important

Updating existing clusters to or from the Premium tier requires changing the support plan.

Update an existing cluster to the Premium tier

Update an existing cluster to the Premium tier using the az aks update command with the --tier parameter set to premium and the --k8s-support-plan parameter set to AKSLongTermSupport.

# Set environment variables
export RESOURCE_GROUP=<your-resource-group-name>
export CLUSTER_NAME=<your-aks-cluster-name>

# Update the AKS cluster
az aks update --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --name $CLUSTER_NAME --tier premium --k8s-support-plan AKSLongTermSupport

Example output:

{
  ...
  "sku": {
    "name": "Base",
    "tier": "Premium"
  },
  "supportPlan": "AKSLongTermSupport",
  ...
}

Update an existing cluster from the Premium tier to the Free or Standard tier

To update an existing cluster from the Premium tier to the Free or Standard tier, use the az aks update command. Set the --tier parameter to free or standard and the --k8s-support-plan parameter to KubernetesOfficial. The following example shows how to update to the Free tier.

# Set environment variables
export RESOURCE_GROUP=<your-resource-group-name>
export CLUSTER_NAME=<your-aks-cluster-name>

# Update the AKS cluster
az aks update --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --name $CLUSTER_NAME --tier free --k8s-support-plan KubernetesOfficial

Example output:

{
  ...
  "sku": {
    "name": "Base",
    "tier": "Free"
  },
  "supportPlan": "KubernetesOfficial",
  ...
}

Feedback

Was this page helpful?

Last updated on 2026-07-06

Cluster management pricing tiers for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

About AKS pricing tiers

AKS Automatic production default

AKS pricing tiers comparison

Uptime SLA terms and conditions

Region availability

Prerequisites

Create a resource group

Create an AKS cluster in the Free tier

Create an AKS cluster in the Standard tier

Create an AKS cluster in the Premium tier

Update an existing cluster from the Standard tier to the Free tier

Update an existing cluster from the Free tier to the Standard tier

Update an existing cluster to or from the Premium tier

Update an existing cluster to the Premium tier

Update an existing cluster from the Premium tier to the Free or Standard tier

Related content

Feedback

Additional resources