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Free, Standard, and Premium pricing tiers for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster management

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) offers three pricing tiers for cluster management: the Free tier, the Standard tier, and the Premium tier. All tiers are in the Base SKU.

Free tier Standard tier Premium tier
When to use • You want to experiment with AKS at no extra cost
• You're new to AKS and Kubernetes		 • You're running production or mission-critical workloads and need high availability and reliability
• You need a financially backed SLA
• Automatically selected for AKS automatic clusters (if you create an AKS Automatic Cluster)		 • You're running production or mission-critical workloads and need high availability and reliability
• You need a financially backed SLA
• All mission critical, at scale, or production workloads requiring two years of one Kubernetes version support
Supported cluster types • Development clusters or small scale testing environments
• Clusters with fewer than 10 nodes		 • Enterprise-grade or production workloads
• Clusters with up to 5,000 nodes		 • Enterprise-grade or production workloads
• Clusters with up to 5,000 nodes
Pricing • Free cluster management
• Pay-as-you-go for resources you consume		 • Pay-as-you-go for resources you consume
• Standard tier Cluster Management Pricing		 • Pay-as-you-go for resources you consume
• Premium tier Cluster Management Pricing
Feature comparison • Recommended for clusters with fewer than 10 nodes, but can support up to 1,000 nodes
• Includes all current AKS features		 • Uptime SLA is enabled by default
• Greater cluster reliability and resources
• Can support up to 5,000 nodes in a cluster
• Includes all current AKS features		 • Includes all current AKS features from standard tier
• Microsoft maintenance past community support

For more information on pricing, see the AKS pricing details.

Uptime SLA terms and conditions

In the Standard tier and Premium tier, the Uptime SLA feature is enabled by default per cluster. The Uptime SLA feature guarantees 99.95% availability of the Kubernetes API server endpoint for clusters using Availability Zones, and 99.9% of availability for clusters that aren't using Availability Zones. For more information, see SLA.

Region availability

  • Free tier, Standard tier, and Premium tier are available in public regions and Azure Government regions where AKS is supported.
  • Free tier, Standard tier, and Premium tier are available for private AKS clusters in all public regions where AKS is supported.

Before you begin

You need Azure CLI version 2.47.0 or later. Run az --version to find your current version. If you need to install or upgrade, see Install Azure CLI.

Create a new cluster and select the pricing tier

Use the Azure CLI to create a new cluster on an AKS pricing tier. You can create your cluster in an existing resource group or create a new one. To learn more about resource groups and working with them, see managing resource groups using the Azure CLI.

Use the az aks create command to create an AKS cluster. The following commands show you how to create a new cluster in the Free, Standard, and Premium tiers.

Below, we set up the required environment variables for the resource group, cluster name, and region. We generate a unique suffix for the resource names to avoid conflicts if run multiple times.

export RANDOM_SUFFIX=$(openssl rand -hex 3)
export REGION="eastus2"
export RESOURCE_GROUP="aks-rg-$RANDOM_SUFFIX"
export CLUSTER_NAME="aks-cluster-$RANDOM_SUFFIX"
az group create --name $RESOURCE_GROUP --location $REGION

Results:

{
  "id": "/subscriptions/xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx/resourceGroups/aks-rg-xxx",
  "location": "eastus2",
  "managedBy": null,
  "name": "aks-rg-xxx",
  "properties": {
    "provisioningState": "Succeeded"
  },
  "tags": null,
  "type": "Microsoft.Resources/resourceGroups"
}

Create a new AKS cluster in the Free tier

# Create a new AKS cluster in the Free tier

az aks create \
    --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \
    --name $CLUSTER_NAME \
    --tier free \
    --generate-ssh-keys

Results:

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

Create a new AKS cluster in the Standard tier

# Create a new AKS cluster in the Standard tier

az aks create \
    --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \
    --name $CLUSTER_NAME \
    --tier standard \
    --generate-ssh-keys

Results:

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

Create a new AKS cluster in the Premium tier

LongTermSupport and Premium tier should be enabled/disabled together.

# Create a new AKS cluster in the Premium tier
# LongTermSupport and Premium tier should be enabled/disabled together

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

Results:

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

Once the deployment completes, it returns JSON-formatted information about your cluster:

# Sample output for --tier free

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

# Sample output for --tier standard

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

# Sample output for --tier premium

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

Update the tier of an existing AKS cluster

The following example uses the az aks update command to update the existing cluster.

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

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

az aks update --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --name $CLUSTER_NAME --tier free

Results:

{
  ...
  "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

az aks update --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --name $CLUSTER_NAME --tier standard

Results:

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

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

Update an existing cluster to the Premium tier

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

Results:

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

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

# Update an existing cluster to from Premium tier to Free or Standard tier
az aks update --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --name $CLUSTER_NAME --tier free --k8s-support-plan KubernetesOfficial
# or
az aks update --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --name $CLUSTER_NAME --tier standard --k8s-support-plan KubernetesOfficial

Results:

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

This process takes several minutes to complete. You shouldn't experience any downtime while your cluster tier is being updated. When finished, the following example JSON snippet shows updating the existing cluster to the Standard tier in the Base SKU.

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

Next steps